LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

?V'4-7S 

(Hjiqu §npjjrir$i 3fxr + 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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Christian Cmdlehood ; 



OE, 



Religion in the Nursery. 



By e. abbey, 



Author of "Diuturnity," " Ecce Ecclesia," "City of God," "Church 

and Ministry." "Baptismal Demonstrations," "Divine 

Assessment," " Call to the Ministry," and 

several smaller works. 






[ N J / 



NASHVILLE, TENN. : 

Southern Methodist Publishing House 

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. 

. 1881 



UB* 



A*** 






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Contents. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 7 

CHAPTEE I. 

Concerning the Naturae Eights of Children.. 20 

CHAPTEE II. 
The Great Law op Moraes 24 

CHAPTEE III. 
Concerning the Eeeigious State of Children 

at Birth 29 

CHAPTEE IV. 
Of the Imbecile, or Infantile, Period * 33 

CHAPTEE V. 

Happiness is Always the Eesult of Obedience.. 41 

CHAPTEE VI. 
Common Parental Cruelties 46 

CHAPTEE VII. 
Too Late, Too Late 50 

CHAPTEE VIII. 
Children Must be Broken 56 

CHAPTEE IX. 
Obedience is not Slavish 61 

CHAPTEE X. 
Thoughtless Training 67 

(3) 



4 Contents. 

CHAPTEE XL 
Whipping Children 71 

CHAPTER XII. 
A Threatening Government 79 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Honor and Manliness in Children 85 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Religious Capacity of Children 89 

CHAPTER XV. 
The Religious Capacity of Children (continued). 100 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Childhood is Natural and Normal 109 

CHAPTER XVII. 
The High Parental Relation 114 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Eligibility to Church-membership 122 

CHAPTER XIX. 
What is the Age of Religious Capability?.... 134 

CHAPTER XX. 
Early Ideas of Religion 140 

CHAPTER XXI. 
Is Sin Ever Necessary? 149 

CHAPTER XXII. 
The Fickleness of Childhood 157 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Children Growing Up Sinless 162 



Contents. 5 

CHAPTEE XXIV. 
Loving and Fearing God 169 

CHAPTEE XXV. 
Conversion, or New Birth 176 

CHAPTEE XXVI. 
Child's Faith and Conversion 183 

CHAPTEE XXVII. 
Children Once Converted 191 

CHAPTEE XXVIII. 
Conversion — Joining Church 196 

CHAPTEE XXIX. 
Of Child's Faith 204 

CHAPTEE XXX. 
The Eight Time for Conversion 214 

CHAPTEE XXXI. 
Of Church-membership. = 222 

CHAPTEE XXXII. 
On the Baptizing of Children 231 

CHAPTEE XXXIII. 
A Eemedy ..... 234 

CHAPTEE XXXIV. 
A Practical Suggestion 239 

CHAPTEE XXXV. 
The Lord's Supper 249 

Conclusion 255 



CHRISTIAN CRADLEHOOD. 



INTKODUCTOBY ESSAY. 

SINCE improvement in all human affairs is 
professedly, and ought to be really, the 
great business and effort of all men, it would 
seem surprising that sometimes so little atten- 
tion is paid to its early stages. Nothing can 
be well built that is faulty in its foundation. 
Civil government, laws, commerce, religion, 
churches, education, health, literature, science, 
medicine, agriculture, railroads, navigation, 
morals, and public and private good of all 
kinds, are to-day what they are, for the most 
part, if not almost or quite wholly, because of 
the well or ill-directed attention, or non-atten- 
tion, which was paid to cradle-life a few years 
ago. Schools, and what is commonly called 
education, form a valuable and important fac- 
tor in life, but they cannot work beyond their 
natural domain. Character is well set before 
their services are required. 

(7) 



8 Christian Cradlehood. 

The nursery is the nursery of life. That 
which is not prepared there is not prepared at 
all. Many things may live, but nothing has 
healthful thrift without well-directed nursery 
labors. Nothing social, moral, or industrial, 
can thrive without it. Christianity itself 
limps, and is inefficient without a healthful 
nursery. 

Nine -tenths of all the preaching is lost. 
What a waste of power! No such waste is 
seen elsewhere in all the industries and econ- 
omies of life. And is this beyond the reach 
of remedy? While there is abundance of gen- 
eral measures of relief proposed, and improve- 
ment here and there is constantly urged, I am 
not aware of any specific, practical remedy 
being recommended for the relief in question. 
There is a remedy for all waste, but frequently 
it is either not clearly seen, or, if seen, is not 
within convenient reach. But such is not the 
case here. In this case a remedy is in plain 
view, ,but only to those who search for it care- 
fully. 

Let us suppose a hundred persons to be 
preached to the ensuing year who are over 
fifteen years old. They are of the better sort. 
For the most part they have had religious 
parents. They have a respectful veneration 



Introductory Essay. 9 

for the Church and its religion, and partially 
keep the Sabbath, revere the Bible, and re- 
spect the ministry. 

Now let us look at those persons at the close 
of the year. They have been habitual church- 
goers, observing generally all the decencies of 
such occasions. They have heard from thirty 
to fifty or a hundred sermons, besides attend- 
ing a number of prayer-meetings, and have 
generally expended their opinions— no mean 
ones — about the preaching, doctrines, style, 
etc. They have furnished pecuniary support 
to the Church to half the extent of the Church- 
members. They " do n't belong to the Church." 

Now, what has been the effect of the year's 
preaching on these people ? Let us see. About 
four or five have joined the Church, as it is 
called, and two or three of these give fair 
promise of religious life. This is about the 
average of our preaching — from two to five 
converts out of every hundred per year. We 
probably fall below it more frequently than 
we rise above it. 

Half our converts are from persons who 
seldom hear preaching. Thousands of thou- 
sands of persons attend church with some 
regularity, or at least frequently, all the days 
of a long irreligious life. Many persons at- 



10 Cheistian Ceadlehood. 

tend preaching year after year with no serious 
idea or remote expectation of becoming relig- 
ions. Fifty sermons and forty prayer-meet- 
ings to the convert is not generally considered 
very discouraging. These sermons generally 
set forth the gospel with no ordinary talent. 
Preaching has greatly improved of late years. 
Such preaching as that of AVesley, Calvin, 
Massillon, and Watson, is very common now 
everywhere. 

These hearers, too, are not mere idle listen- 
ers. They admire and feel the force of the 
powerful and stirring appeals and reasoning 
to which they listen. They are oftentimes 
moved to the bottom, and scores and hundreds 
are the half-way, or "almost," resolves they 
make in all honest fidelity, but, as the treach- 
erous future discloses, only to be violated as 
fast as made. 

Under our preaching the Church holds its 
own, and gains a little. One would suppose 
that the incessant labors of a hundred thou- 
sand picked men, embodying much of the best 
talent and learning of mankind, would effect 
something, directed to almost any subject, good 
or bad, true or false. 

Surely there is something out of joint here. 
Such waste of labor is not seen in any other 



Introductory Essay. 11 

field. The disproportion of labor and result, 
so far as result can be seen and estimated, 
shows a loss of power ten, if not a hundred, 
fold greater than in other enterprises. 

Suppose the subject-matter of argument and 
exhortation, with so little objection to any 
thing put forth, related to improved modes of 
agriculture, or to education. Suppose these 
vast labors of zeal, eloquence, and logical rea- 
soning, related to greatly improved modes of 
securing larger and more advantageous civil 
liberty and the lightening of civil burdens, to 
new and improved methods of conducting com- 
merce, or to sanitary processes by which health 
and longevity would be largely secured, or to 
any thing promising large increase of human 
advantage of any sort. It may be replied that 
these subjects have received and are receiving 
large polemical attention. This is true, but 
such debates are of a character very different 
from those under consideration. The former 
relate to the safest and most expeditious or 
best modes of reaching ends desired by all, 
while the latter are almost wholly expostula- 
tory exhortations to acknowledged duty and 
conceded advantage. Men debate about the 
best modes of securing the largest and safest 
civil liberty, but they do not debate, by the 



12 Christian Cradlehood. 

thousand, and at great labor and cost, whether 
they will have civil liberty at all. Men do not 
debate for and against commerce, or educa- 
tion, or science — whether we should have such 
things at all. Nobody argues, by the thou- 
sand, that we ought to have medicine, or gov- 
ernment, or literature, or navigation. No such 
arguments are needed. 

The one hundred persons above alluded to 
do not entertain views or opinions different 
from those of the ministers to whom they list- 
en. With no difference of creed or opinion, 
they do not argue back — they all think alike. 
Sermons thus unheeded and neglected are not 
answered with No, no, but with Yes, yes. 

Now, why this vast waste of power? Why 
so little result from such immense labor ? The 
usual answer is that the great wickedness of 
mankind is the cause. We have inherited so 
much wickedness from Adam that men are 
very wicked. This is a reply, but not an an- 
swer. Wicked men generally, in other mat- 
ters, do listen to reason, and change their 
course on being convinced of a better course. 

It is true that wickedness is but another 
name for irreligion, but it is also true that 
great mistakes are frequently made about our 
inheriting all this from Adam. The truth is 



Introductory Essay. 13 

we inherited none of it from Adam. Adam 
furnished us with nothing but the seed. We 
ourselves cultivated the seed, and raised the 
crop. Seed do but little if any harm uncul- 
tivated. .Wickedness is not inherited. We 
make it ourselves. We inherit a tendency to 
wickedness, and by failing or neglecting to 
resist the tendency we become wicked. 

The ancestral inheritance of evil was seed, or 
tendency. Vice or virtue have seeds, or tend- 
encies. This does no harm of itself. Seed 
may be cultivated, or be permitted to grow, 
and so may a tendency. This evil inheritance 
has been increased by our own cultivation a 
thousand-fold. At five or ten years it was in- 
creased a hundred-fold, and at twenty-five a 
thousand-fold. And so, as we preach only to 
persons over ten years, and mostly to those 
over twenty, our preaching is directed in but 
an almost infinitesimal degree against our in- 
herited evil. Almost wholly it is applied not 
to inherited, but to cultivated, evil. 

In other words, under our system of practi- 
cal culture and ministering the gospel, we di- 
rect our batteries to the extent of ninety-nine 
hundredths of our force against fortifications 
of our own erection; or if we did not build 
these fortifications with our own hands, we 



14 Christian Cradlehood. 

stood passively by and, without objection, saw 
Satan do it. Now, why not bring the gospel 
to bear against the enemy's works before these 
strong w T alls of defense are grown up at all? 
Why wait for manhood and womanhood, or 
even youthhood? Why not begin at the first? 
Ordinary nursery training and Sunday- 
schools do not by any means meet the case. 
If properly conducted they become subsidiary 
helps. But these things do not begin until 
the fifth or tenth year, when the character is 
w r ell set, and very difficult to change. So when 
we begin to present the gospel remedy, the 
power of evil is augmented twenty or forty- 
fold. Now, why not apply this gospel remedy 
at the first, before this great increase has be- 
come added? Why wait until the enemy has 
so greatly strengthened his works? or why 
not begin before these evil powers have 
strengthened at all? We seldom begin with 
a fair hope and good expectation of conver- 
sion and Church-membership before children 
reach ten or fifteen years, Indeed, our very 
books which teach and treat of early Christian 
training speak of, or encourage, the idea that 
conversion at the age of ten or fifteen is early 
conversion! Why not so plan and arrange our 
ministerial work as to look for and secure con- 



Introductory Essay. 15 

version the third year, or the second year, or 
the first year? 

Now, of the Christian man who considers 
that either impracticable or difficult, I have 
this to say: He did not get his Christian teach- 
ing from either Scripture or from sound phi- 
losophy, but from passively following a social 
morbid fashion. 

The following essay advocates the expedi- 
ency, practicability, and necessity of beginning 
at the beginning— that is, to let the Christian 
life take an even start with the natural life. 
It holds the first year to be more important for 
the solid implantation of Christian principle 
than any subsequent year, and so of the sec- 
ond, the third, the fourth. It explains and 
advises an even start in the race of life. The 
general rule is that, disobedience having sev- 
eral years the start, it is seldom overtaken. 
Church - preaching alone is a demonstrated 
failure. We build up difficulties mountain- 
high, or, what is about the same thing, stand 
by and see them grow up, putting forth no 
hand of resistance, and spend life, labor, and 
talent, in vain attempts to batter them down. 

We neglect the rich virgin soil, and then 
vainly try to cultivate the worn-out lands. 
The agriculturist who begins to cultivate the 



16 Christian Cradlehood. 

tender herbage when the weeds have attained 
ten times their height may labor hard, late and 
early, but his crop will be small and sickly. 
Just so of children-culture. In both cases the 
failure will be certain unless we begin at the 
beginning. 

The corn-fields of two farmers, alike at the 
jolanting, were cultivated differently. The one 
farmer was there with his implements as soon 
as the corn was up. Weeds were abundant, 
but they were tender, and easily removed; the 
corn never felt their choking influence. The 
labor was light and the harvest abundant. Not 
so with neighbor Indulgence. He waited a 
full month because, as it then seemed, the 
weeds did not impede the growth of the corn 
very much. But soon after the corn began to 
dwindle and turn yellow. The weeds grew 
much faster than was anticipated. The farmer 
toiled hard and faithfully, late and early, and 
really did much more work than his neighbor, 
but his harvest was sickly, meager, and profit- 
less. 

There are points of fundamental defect in 
our cradle and nursery culture. In theory we 
tacitly concede that young children are not 
capable of Christianity — that they can only be 
trained for it after awhile. 



Introductory Essay. 17 

The following theses are advocated in this 
essay: 

First. Christianity being exactly adapted to 
all sane persons, in all circumstances, ages, 
and conditions, it is an error to exclude chil- 
dren from its highest benefits and highest 
responsibilities because of tender age — any 
age. 

Second. Idiots and insane persons are inca- 
pable of Christianity; but not, however, be- 
cause they are intellectually incapable of un- 
derstanding the system of divine salvation, but 
because they are not capable of obedience. 

Third. Christianity is obedience to rightful 
authority, and nothing more — ready, implicit 
obedience. 

Fourth. Capability of doing wrong implies 
capability to do right, which is Christianity in 
the highest sense. 

Fifth. The earliest moral or intellectual im- 
pulse of which a child is capable is affectionate 
obedience; hence, as the earlier the more fa- 
vorable is the period for the formation and 
permanent planting of habit, so the earlier the 
more favorable the period for the solid im- 
plantation of sound religious principle and 
practice. This early opportunity once lost is 
seldom regained. 
2 



18 Christian Cradlehood. 

Sixth. Affectionate obedience to rightful au- 
thority is not irksome, unpleasant, or disagree- 
able in any persons of any age, if it be taught 
and cultivated from birth; but in all cases 
when so encouraged and fixed as, a principle, 
it is pleasant, agreeable, and furnishes the 
highest cheerfulness and happiness in life. 
There is no reluctance in true obedience. 

Seventh. As sin is not, and can never be, nec- 
essary, so it is always avoidable, and ought to 
be avoided. And as the gospel is the only 
cure for sin, it ought to be prominently, for- 
midably, and effectually brought to bear upon 
the earliest periods of cradlehood, because 
wrong-doing in some shapes begins from the 
very first, and repetitions of any thing greatly 
increase the tendency thereto. 

Eighth. While character in a man is never 
entirely fixed and finished until about the close 
of life, its massive foundations are largely and 
almost immovably laid in the first two or three 
years of life. 

If attention has not been well directed to tho 
simplicity and naturalness of cradle and early 
nursery government by writers and teachers, 
it is high time it were done. It is not pre- 
tended that this little, humble treatise sets 
forth an elaborated system of this kind; but it 



Introductory Essay. 19 

is pretended that it contains some wholesome 
hints to parents and ministers in that direc- 
tion. And it is hoped they may arrest the at- 
tention of some men or women of thought w T ho 
may elaborate and popularize the subject. I 
cannot be mistaken in the belief that by some 
adequate and practical handling of the sub- 
ject every social interest of mankind may be 
elevated a full octave in no great number of 
years. The improvement of society must begin 
here. 



20 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTEE I. 

CONCERNING THE NATURAL RIGHTS OF 
CHILDREN. 

I THINK it safe to say that no class of per- 
sons amongst us are so generally and so 
largely deprived of their natural rights as chil- 
dren — those under ten years or so, and more 
especially those under about four or five. 

Who excluded the Christian religion from 
the cradle and the nursery? and by what au- 
thority was it done ? Does natural science or 
revealed truth authorize it? Surely not. It 
is a mere worldly, unsanctified custom. 

The parent is appointed to do the child's 
thinking, direct his acting in all things, and 
start him, well equipped at every point, in the 
great warfare of life. The soft, passive, wax- 
like, living human person, unformed, but flex- 
ible and yielding, is put into the hands of the 
parent with the solemn injunction to control 
him in every thing, so that from this unknow- 
ing and unthinking little mass of humanity 
may grow a man or woman for life and for 
God. The obligation of the animal mother is 



Natural Eights of Children. 21 

to protect the offspring from outward violence, 
and supply physical wants. The human moth- 
er is to do more. Her obligation is to make 
a person and character out of living, but almost 
raw, material. The child has a natural right 
to this character. He needs it through life. 
He can scarcely live without it. It is the prod- 
uct not only of high obligation, but of labor, 
of love, and of care. 

The usual way is, in case of failure — which 
is the case grossly in nine cases in ten, and 
partially in nearly all the rest — to put t^ie 
blame on the child or on nature, but the guilty 
party is the parent always. It is the neglected 
child, the child deprived of his natural rights 
by the mother and the father, that encounters a 
degraded life of ignorance and vice. The par- 
ent prepared the way — either by doing, or not 
doing — -for idleness, for dishonesty, for irre- 
ligion, and for crime. Quite likely the parents 
themselves were treated as badly in their child- 
hood. 

In the rearing of children, as in most other 
matters, we, with more or less thoughtlessness, 
"follow the fashion," and consider that if we 
come up to. about the average of family cult- 
ure, or perhaps some of us aim a little above 
it, we are doing tolerably well. We, all of us, 



22 Christian Cradlehood. 

look with far too much complacency and self- 
satisfaction upon average life and duties. 

The obligation to supply the moral and re- 
ligious wants of children is the highest obliga- 
tion known to domestic life. And yet how 
woefully it is neglected! How little is it even 
thought of! Instead of a wise and prudent 
regard for the rights and interests of young 
children, the first few years are spent in fond- 
ling, play, and caressing exclusively, save the 
usual attention to physical wants. Moral cult- 
ure is not thought of. And although these 
playful endearments and nursery pastimes 
are very important to both parent and child, 
yet if other duties of higher culture be at the 
same time neglected, the most serious conse- 
quences cannot fail to follow. Almost uni- 
formly before the first lessons in moral training 
are attempted, the opportunity — the best and by 
far the most favorable opportunity — for their 
enforcement is gone, never to be regained. 

The greatest of all misfortunes resting upon 
the social surface of Christendom to-day is 
this neglect of early training. By early train- 
ing I mean training from the first. Most of 
this training lies in the first year, and most of 
that remaining in the second, and most of that 
remaining in the third, and so on, 



Natural Eights of Children. 23 

Now, the reader who has studied so little of 
human nature as to "know better than all 
that," had better lay this little book aside, and 
read no farther. He is not likely to be prof- 
ited by any thing it contains. 



24 Christian Oradlehood. 



CHAPTEE II. 

THE GREAT LAW OF MORALS. 

THEKE is, after all, but one lesson and one 
law of morals and religion to be incul- 
cated and observed from birth to the end 
of life. That lesson is obedience — obedience to 
rightful authority. That includes, implies, and 
combines, the whole of moral duty and moral 
principle. The only difference between right 
and wrong is obedience to proper authority on 
the one hand, and self-will — doing as one 
chooses — on the other. Obeying rightful au- 
thority is human perfectibility, applied at any 
stage of life, and in any circumstances of hu- 
man condition, from birth to death. And it is 
a great mistake to suppose that any living per- 
son of sane mind, however young, is not fully 
capable of obedience, as much so as any other 
person. 

A young child is not capable of understand- 
ing any reason for obedience, or the duty or 
advantages of it; but he fully understands its 
nature, and is as fully competent to the per- 
formance as he ever will be. His obedience 



The Great Law of Morals. 25 

is mere submission without a reason, and yet 
with him it carries all the ends and purposes 
of obedience with the highest and most affec- 
tionate motives. This infantile obedience can 
always b6 administered by the parent with the 
greatest ease and good nature in both parent 
and child, if begun in time. A word fitly 
spoken, not at all understood literally, is nev- 
ertheless well comprehended by its tone, or 
a look or gesture. The child does not know 
there are such words as command and obey, 
and yet no one understands these things better 
than he. Obedience is not necessarily accom- 
panied by a virtuous wish to do right, but the 
young are so constituted that the absence of 
these moral motives detracts not a whit from 
all the advantages to be derived from the high- 
est style of obedience to law. 

So that obedience, yielding submission, non- 
resistance to rightful authority, understood or 
not understood, is the great comprehensive 
law of the moral universe. The Decalogue 
enjoins obedience, and nothing more. Thou 
shalt, thou shalt not, are its behests. God re- 
quires obedience to rightful authority, and 
nothing more. Every thing that is right is 
obedience — every thing that is wrong is disobe- 
dience. Obedience secures the highest liberty 



26 Christian Cradlehood. 

of man — disobedience entails tlie most slavish 
degradation. Implicit obedience to rightful 
authority forms the sole platform of all morals 
and all religion. 

Some persons are too young to recognize 
God as the rightful superior, but none are too 
young to recognize a superior. This transfer 
of authority from the parent to the Maker be- 
gins with the opening dawn of the intellect, 
and closes with the maturity of manhood. 

It may be said that this mere obedience to 
parents is not religion. That may depend on 
the definition given to the term religion. It 
places him in a right relation to Christ, so the 
Saviour himself says: "Whosoever therefore 
shall humble himself as this little child, the 
same shall be greatest in the kingdom of 
heaven." Not because he was a child, but 
because he was a humble and obedient child. 

The law of obedience being the great moral 
law of life and of universal application, and 
happiness being the end of man's creation, it 
follows necessarily that happiness is the meas- 
ure of obedience, and obedience the measure 
of happiness. This law is absolutely univer- 
sal. An unhappy child is unhappy because 
of his disobedience, and in exact proportion 
to his disobedience. And just so of an older 



The Gkeat Law of Morals. 27 

person. A cheerful and happy child is cheer- 
ful and happy because of his obedience, and 
in exact proportion to the submission and un- 
hesitating readiness of his obedience. 

And so of liberty. Ignorance of life and its 
laws supposes that obedience restricts liberty 
and lessens happiness. That depends upon 
which code of laws is obeyed. There are two. 
Obedience to rightful authority produces the 
largest liberty, and the largest happiness, be- 
cause it harmonizes with all nature around us; 
while obedience to wrongful authority pro- 
duces the smallest liberty, and smallest meas- 
ure of happiness, for the reason that it conflicts 
with the constitution of nature around us, and 
disturbs and deranges the sources of happi- 
ness. 

God made things right, and not wrong. It 
is unreasonable to look for early piety where 
impiety has been regularly, if not systemati- 
cally, inculcated from birth. Religion is the 
submission of the self-will; irreligion is the 
exercise and strengthening of it. A child, 
though he knows nothing of the moral aspects 
of these things, following the bent of his fall- 
en nature, is suffered to have his own way in 
ten thousand little things, where there is a 
well-understood contest for supremacy, looked 



28 Christian Cradlehood. 

upon, it is true, as matter of mere trifle by the 
inconsiderate parent, but is none the less real 
on that account, necessarily becomes strength- 
ened and strengthened more and more every 
day in the solid principles of legitimate infideli- 
ty. Then at the age of eight, ten, or fifteen years, 
it is expected that all this growth in infidelity 
shall be laid aside, and a spirit of submissive 
obedience and cross-bearing be adopted. This 
is unreasonable and unnatural. Such things 
do occur, but they are one in a hundred. The 
submission of the will, or cross-bearing, as it 
is also called, is a hundred-fold more easily 
inculcated the first year, and in the nursery, 
than ever after. If any one is unwilling to 
call this Christianity, he is at full liberty to 
call it by another name, but he cannot fail to 
see that it embodies all the principles of true 
religion. 

It is very easy with any child of any dispo- 
sition to establish this principle and practice of 
submission, if undertaken at the first, and pur- 
sued with some reasonable diligence; and it is 
very certain that to fail to do so is to anchor 
the principles of infidelity solidly, if not im- 
movably. This is seen in a sad and uniform 
experience. 



Eeligious State at Birth. 29 



CHAPTEE III. 

CONCERNING THE RELIGIOUS STATE OE 
CHILDREN AT BIRTH. 

IN a future chapter I shall have more to say 
on this subject, but will make a few pre- 
liminary observations here. 

Religion consists in two things— first, what 
God does to and for us by his grace; and sec- 
ondly, what man does for himself toward 
God in the resignation of his will and obe- 
dience of life. But as God requires of none 
beyond his capability, he supplies the young 
with more grace because they need more. Ac- 
cording to several ability is the law of require- 
ment. 

Children are not born sinners, to speak ac- 
curately, because as yet they have not sinned 
for mere lack of capability. They are not walk- 
ers, for they have not walked, nor talkers, for 
they have not talked. But the natural tenden- 
cy to either sinning or talking is the same. 
The one needs a preventive— the other does 
not. And the Christian religion is both pre- 
ventive and cure of sin. The grace of God in 



30 Christian Cradlehood. 

Christ is fully adequate to both those purposes, 
if properly applied. 

And a great practical question is, When is 
the proper time to begin the practical applica- 
tion of the Christian religion to personal child- 
hood for prevention, or for both prevention and 
cure, as any one may choose to have it? I say 
for both prevention and cure, for no man can 
tell precisely when a child first begins to com- 
mit sin. 

And the answer to this question is, At the 
very first. There is no proper time to begin 
but at the very first. It is the revealed policy 
of the Almighty that the Christian religion 
should have direct and immediate application 
to all living persons. But it may be asked, Is 
not sin inevitable, and so a necessary and even 
an unavoidable thing? 

Sin is to be avoided as well as cured. It is 
to be shunned, deprecated, hated, not courted 
or counseled with. To conclude that sin, pros- 
pectively considered, cannot be avoided, is to 
invite Satan to come and sit, and eat, and sleep 
with us, or at least to let him know that we 
expect him to do so. If we find ourselves com- 
pelled to look upon sin in the past as an un- 
fortunate experience, let us apply to Christ for 
deliverance and for future preventive. But 



Eeligious State at Bikth. -31 

let no living man, from the birth to the grave, 
acknowledge that in any future moment Satan 
will be stronger than Christ. 

Obedience is Christianity. A child of obe- 
dience is in the same position as a mature man 
of obedience. Complete obedience meets all 
moral requirements in young or old. There 
is a time when a child is not capable of moral 
obedience, but there is no time when he is not 
capable of actual obedience. And the habit 
of actual or of non-moral obedience may very 
easily be so well and so fully established that 
moral obedience, when the period of its exer- 
cise shall arrive, will be a delight rather than 
a burden. Moral accountability begins at an 
imperceptible minimum, and increases imper- 
ceptibly, and transfers itself by imperceptible 
stages from the earthly parent to the heavenly 
authority. 

The child who is fully obedient — compulso- 
ry at first and moral afterward, being formed 
into a habit — is in the highest state of grace 
known to Christianity; not perhaps in respect 
of mere technical theology, but in acceptance 
or right position before God in Christ; for 
obedience to rightful authority is the highest 
moral state. 

The strong and never-failing tendency to 



32 Christian Cradlehood. 

sinfulness and ruin in children at birth, called 
by various names by different writers, will be 
inquired into hereafter; but in order that a 
child may enter into life with prospects bright- 
er than very darkness, two things are indis- 
pensably necessary. First, by solemn prayer 
to the Saviour of children, he must be dedi- 
cated to God by special parental sanctification. 
He must be set apart from this unholy turmoil 
of strife and life, into which he would otherwise 
enter, to a Christian life and course of conduct 
such as Christ has provided for all children. 
Secondly, from the very first of life a habit 
and practice of ready obedience to parents 
must be thoroughly inaugurated and estab- 
lished; not a reluctant doing merely, by per- 
suasion, or hire, or fear, but a cheerful, ready, 
and loving obedience. And, once established, 
it must be kept in fresh and lively exercise. 



Imbecile, or Infantile, Peeiod. 33 



CHAPTEE IV. 

OF THE IMBECILE, OR INFANTILE, PERIOD. 

THERE is a period of childhood of entire 
moral imbecility and ignorance of moral 
duty. We cannot mark its precise termina- 
tion. So far as we know, it has no exact ter- 
mination; but, extending from birth, it shades 
and blends very gradually and imperceptibly 
into the state of moral accountability. I sup- 
pose it may generally reach to a period not 
much beyond the close of the second year — 
generally, perhaps not so far. This period in 
the life of every person, which we might call 
his absolute nonage, is generally regarded an 
entire moral blank, or period of moral waste. 
For it is said, "What can you teach a child 
who has no perception of right and wrong? 
Training, or moral nurture, must be begun 
after awhile." So far from this period being a 
moral waste, and not susceptible of moral im- 
provement, I believe it to be by far the most im- 
portant for moral and religious culture of any 
period of the same length in the whole life of the 
man. And I here pause a minute or two for 
3 



34 Christian Cradlehood. 

that expression, to settle well in the mind of the 
reader. I attach great importance to the idea. 
I hold the first year the most important of all 
the years, and the first two years the most im- 
portant of any two, the first three of any three, 
and so on. This belief .may seem strange to 
some. If so, it is because you have not thought 
deeply and rightly on the subject. 

Let it be repeated: the great fundamental 
principle of moral life — that which makes up 
all morals and all religion— that which both 
constitutes and supports every thing that is 
right, and stands in never-ending opposition 
to every thing that is wrong, in all states and 
all circumstances — is obedience — obedience to 
rightful authority. By this is meant not the 
mere actual doing for present reasons, but the 
doing from a spirit, temper, and character of 
submissive obedience. And let it be espe- 
cially noted: this spirit of obedience in chil- 
dren is brought about in no other way than by 
constant training, custom, and habitual exer- 
cise. And farther, that this solid formation 
of habit, for obedience or disobedience, begins 
with inevitable certainty the first day of life, 
and proceeds with most wonderful power and 
rapidity. The first year settles the habit of 
obedience more than any other year, the first 



Imbecile, oe Infantile, Period. 35 

two more than any other two, the first three 
more than any other three, and so on. 

Of course, a child of that age thinks and 
knows nothing about obedience as a moral 
duty. He, knows nothing about a reason for 
any thing. He knows how to obey, and what 
obedience is, as well as he will know at forty. 
He forms a habit of obedience as easily and 
as readily as any other habit; and everybody 
knows that the earlier habits of any kind are 
formed, no matter how early, the stronger they 
are. It requires great effort to break off early 
habits of any kind. Indeed, generally, it can- 
not be done. They follow a man to the grave. 
The man in the Gospel said truly, " I cannot 

dig.- 

Many persons suppose some good degree of 
intelligence or moral perception is necessary 
in order to obedience. This is an error. A 
dog or horse is as capable of mere obedience 
as a habit as a child or a man. There is no 
intrinsic moral worth in obedience at this age, 
but its value is none the less on that account. 
Without it, and for the lack of it, nineteen per- 
sons in every twenty are ruined, world without 
end, even in our best communities, and the one 
in twenty is saved, if saved at all, by a most 
amazing miracle of mercy. It is the habit of 



36 Cpiristian Cradlehood. 

obeying, and not the merit or goodness of it, 
of which I now write. Every mother knows 
that a child, no matter how young, forms very 
decided habits. He recognizes her authority 
from the first; not her right to rule, but her 
actual rule; and if this control be well main- 
tained, a gentle, easy, and cheerful habit of 
obeying cannot fail to follow. The human 
constitution requires and necessitates it with 
unfailing certainty. And with this habit well 
established the moral aspects of obedience will 
soon form in the mind as it expands, and will 
strengthen with the increasing strength of 
years. 

Let us suppose two children precisely alike 
in all respects naturally, and that the moral 
sense begins to dawn at any given period; but 
there is this difference in training during the 
period of infancy — the one was trained to the 
habit of obeying, and the other to the habit of 
exercising his own self-will. Now the moral 
training of both begins, but with this vast 
difference: in the one case you have an easy, 
healthful, and cheerful habit of obedience and 
submission to begin with; and in the other, a 
veteran self-will and stiff neck of forty years' 
growth, for a child's perverse self-will grows 
about forty years every twelve months. 



Imbecile, oe Infantile, Period. 37 

But this infantile obedience must be elastic, 
mild, and prudently adapted to the infantile 
condition. It must not aim so much to control 
the child's actions in every thing as to estab- 
lish an understanding as to where sovereign 
control resides. Nothing is more easy or more 
certain in all cases than to establish this un- 
derstanding, if pursued from the first. Dis- 
obedience and self-will at the first are no 
stronger than a zephyr, but they grow from 
the very first with surprising rapidity; and 
with prudent management they need never be 
much stronger than a zephyr. 

This baby-obedience is generally neglected 
because the parent sees no immediate advan- 
tage arising from it. The disobedience and 
self-will are smart, funny, and mere amuse- 
ment. The inconsiderate parents vainly sup- 
pose they can establish their control, and bring 
the child to subjection after awhile, when obe- 
dience shall become practically useful. No 
parent ever succeeded in such an undertaking. 
It is unnatural. 

A child, however young, is a complete man, 
possessing all the elements of the human con- 
stitution. A little time for development is all 
that is necessary to bring them into active ex- 
ercise. This development begins at once, and 



38 Christian Cradlehood. 

proceeds with great rapidity and certainty, and 
has made large progress long before moral 
culture can be begun. 

The proper improvement of this period of 
imbecility is of the utmost importance in after- 
life. It shapes the moral character by mere 
habit. The tendency to do whatever we are 
accustomed to do is the most powerful instinct 
of nature in either man or beast. Cultivate 
it properly, and you have a good foundation for 
character. Neglect it, and the loss is irre- 
trievable. 

Indeed, it is quite safe to say that we may 
go a full step higher. "Without any preten- 
sions to physiological science beyond what is 
open to popular information, it may be confi- 
dently stated that the formation of character 
may be, and oftentimes is, partially formed in 
the womb of the mother. Large thought must 
be turned in this direction by thinkers. The 
improvement of society requires it. 

How character, moral, mental, or physical, 
is formed or influenced in the fetal state we do 
not know, but that it is done we know very 
well. That external circumstances and influ- 
ences acting upon the mother during the period 
of gestation are transferable, and generally, if 
not always, are more or less transferred to the 



Imbecile, or Infantile, Period. 39 

offspring, there is no clonbt among persons of 
information. Take two somewhat extreme 
cases, otherwise equal. In the one case the 
woman, herself of irritable temper, is sub- 
jected to disappointment and crosses; misfor- 
tune and little acts of injustice press hard 
upon her; family discords increase and annoy; 
she is thrown into society below her grade; 
her eye, and consequently her heart, rest upon 
dissatisfaction, and her temper is occasionally 
ruffled into ferment. The other case is differ- 
ent: the woman is kept in a cheerful mood; 
pleasant company surrounds her; her visit- 
ors are persons of equal intelligence with her- 
self; elevated conversation gives her food for 
thought; agreeable things and agreeable com- 
pany greet her. 

Now, in these cases the laws of nature re- 
quire and necessitate a vast difference in the 
structure of character. A hint to the thought- 
ful is all that is intended here. The subject 
is susceptible of indefinite elaboration, and its 
great importance cannot be questioned. The 
intelligent and thoughtful man can but look 
forward to an improved social period when an 
incoming generation will be far better ar- 
ranged for than the past or the present, not 
only in the matter of training and educating 



40 Christian Cradlehood. 

proper, but in a greatly improved fetal and 
even embryonic state. Some one said that men 
were born savages. That might be doubted 
as a necessity; but if true, we need not long 
remain so. 

On the whole, see the amount of daily and 
nightly toil, labor, vexation, anxiety, and wear 
and tear of mind and body undergone in the 
course of twenty or twenty-five years by the 
average mother in the effort to keep her chil- 
dren from immediate harm or outrage ! This 
great burden upon human life is a world of 
immensity! Now, nine-tenths of this is unnec- 
essary ! It is self-created, self-imposed. It is 
not only unnecessary as an extra burden on 
the mother herself, but the very indulgence of 
it works detriment and life-long evil upon the 
children which is fearful to contemplate. One- 
tenth part of all this maternal labor and anx- 
iety will work a far better and vastly more 
valuable purpose if applied at the proper time, 
and in the proper way. Read, and you will 
see it. 



Happiness the Eesult of Obedience. 41 



CHAPTEE V. 

HAPPINESS IS ALWAYS THE EESULT OF 
OBEDIENCE. 

IT is exceedingly important that children be 
kept in a cheerful and happy mood. Un- 
happy children make an unhappy household. 
It is cruel to suffer children to fret, chafe, 
tease, and cry from hour to hour. The humor 
becomes soured, the feelings rasped, the child 
is troubled and unhappy. His sorrow is deep 
and real, though the cause of it may be what 
we older ones would call a trifle. 

Some of the plainest and simplest lessons of 
life seem hard to learn. Happiness is the result 
of obedience. This principle is world-wide and 
never-f ailing. It is more apparent in children 
than grown people, for the reason that with 
children all emotions are quick. Feelings 
come quick and go quick. Results are quickly 
seen. Three-fourths, if not far more, of all tho 
unhappiness in children is produced by incon- 
siderate attempts to meet demands that have 
been repeatedly denied, and are perhaps im- 
practicable. Children are human persons, sub- 



42 Chkistian Ckadlehood. 

ject to human laws. The drunkard tries to 
satisfy his thrist by drinking, the covetous 
man by getting, the debauchee by indulgence; 
and how do they succeed? They add fuel to 
the flame, and constantly increase the trouble 
they so vainly try to abate. 

A cross, unhappy child — always a disobe- 
dient one — already made miserable by indul- 
gence — wants, or imagines he wants, a dozen 
things in quick succession, each one forbidden 
in turn, or previously known to be prohibited, 
and each is after awhile grudgingly or par- 
tially granted. And the foolish parent vainly 
supposes that the fortieth indulgence will sat- 
isfy. Such parental wrongs and injuries are 
criminal. And the complaint is, O what a bad 
child! It is the natural and certain result of 
your own doing. Who expects to sow thistles 
and gather grapes? 

God gave you a good child, and you, by your 
criminal ignorance and incompetency, have 
well-nigh rained him. Most assuredly the 
child is to blame, as much so as you suppose, 
but you are ten times more to blame. The 
only way possible by which children can be 
made happy is by making them obedient; and 
the only way by which they can be made obe- 
dient is to keep them happy. Happiness and 



Happiness the Eesult of Obedience. 43 

obedience are twin and inseparable the world 
over. 

Children's wants, mostly whimsical and im- 
aginary, alternately denied and granted, over 
and over again, in succession and confusion, 
do but increase the want and the vexation more 
and more, and wretchedness, vexation, and 
strengthened disobedience, are the never-fail- 
ing result. 

And this nursery of mischief and unhappi- 
ness is far from being the worst of it. It is 
in these young years that character for life is 
formed. The temper is soured; angry feelings 
are engendered, and a spirit of dissatisfaction 
and complaining becomes fixed; and these fol- 
low the man or the woman to the end of three- 
score and ten years. Traits of character thus 
become constitutional and changeless. All 
the quarreling and fighting in the land, with 
all the sad consequences thereof, all family 
discord and trouble, with its endless harvest 
of evils, had their seed sown by thoughtless 
parents, or was permitted by them, back yon- 
der in the nursery. What fearful responsi- 
bility! The idea of ready, unhesitating obe- 
dience was never taught the child, and how is 
he expected to feel its force ? And when he 
comes to learn and know about it, how can he 



44 Christian Cradlehood. 

feel and apply its force? He has from tlie 
first, in early infancy, been taught to be pleased, 
to be humored in his whims, to have his own 
way, to govern every one around him more or 
less, and if required occasionally to submit 
at all in any thing, he has always understood 
that to do so was a great hardship and wrong 
to himself. Cheerful submission is a thing 
he never heard of. To please him is, in 
his estimation, the great business of life. 
Then what can be looked for under such 
training ? 

And at the same time nothing is more prac- 
ticable or much easier than the establishment 
and permanent continuance of a well-under- 
stood doctrine that children are subordinate — 
that the parent rules, not occasionally and by 
chance, in fits of bad humor, but permanently 
and regularly. Then you have a good, solid 
foundation. You have a settled habit to assist 
you in governing. There is no strife or con- 
tention in the premises. But let the young 
yearling will rise to the surface, and hoist its 
tiny banner a few times, and now you have 
trouble, lightly as you may think of it. 

It is a hard thing to inculcate obedience to 
God and humble submission to his will in 
children who have not been in the constant 



Happiness the Eesult of Obedience. 45 

habit of submissive obedience to their par- 
ents. But with a spirit and habit of obedience 
to any rightful authority once established, the 
rest follows easily, and without friction. 



46 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

COMMON PARENTAL CRUELTIES. 

THE heading of this chapter would seem to 
be harsh language, but it is fully justified 
by abundant facts. It would not do, I suppose, 
to say in plain words that crimes are habit- 
ually taught in most families, and yet I do not 
know that the truth would suffer much by such 
a declaration. There is scarcely a crime in 
the Decalogue, save one, of which children are 
not capable, that is not frequently inculcated 
in its principles, at least, in most families. 
The foundation is laid, the seed is sown, the 
principles are inculcated. 

Anger, resentment, quarreling, fighting, and 
murder, are only different phases and degrees 
of the same crime. All crimes are taught in 
their rudiments first — thoughtlessly it may be, 
but none the less certainly for that, Anger is 
the immediate fruit of disobedience, and re- 
sentment, hitting back, in fun or in earnest — - 
it matters not much which — is sowing the 
seeds of fighting and murder. 

Early impressions are frequently inculcated 



Common Parental Cruelties. 47 

in lessons like this: "Now, George, don't let 
that boy impose upon you; give him as good 
as he sends." And then the foolish parents 
think they are very unfortunate in after-years 
to find their boy the author or subject of a 
homicide, and the family in deep distress 
thereby. 

Lying is the parent of more crime than 
almost any other one thing, and the extent to 
which this is encouraged and virtually taught 
is appalling. A mother frequently tells her 
children fifty lies a clay, and in most cases the 
child knows they are lies. And so in the 
child's estimation lying is a inere harmless 
pastime. Children are amused, flattered, 
threatened, and frightened with forty hobgob- 
lin lies until it is well-nigh impossible for them 
to have serious regard for truth. " George, I 
will certainly whip you well if you do not go 
this instant." But George has heard such 
meaningless falsehoods too often to be fright- 
ened by one now. His wagon needs attention, 
and his whip-lash has a knot in it; and so he 
goes, if at all, when more at leisure. " O Su- 
san, you are the very worst girl I ever did see 
in my life ! " But Susan very well knows thero 
is not a word of truth in it, for only an hour 
ago her father told her she was a very nice 



48 Christian Cradlehood. 

girl, and her mother has also told her the 
same thing frequently. The hiding of Tom- 
my's marbles, telling him you don't know 
where they are, may be child's-play, but it is 
germinal stealing, and lying to hide it. If 
such seed ripens at all, as it is likely to do, its 
fruit may be looked for in legitimate places 
such as criminality, the court-room, or peni- 
tentiary; or if not in these places, at least in a 
bad character. 

The pernicious influence of thoughtless vis- 
itors and nurses in families is still worse. The 
man is only playing with little Henry, two or 
three years old, and yet he is systematically 
planting the seeds of bloodshed and misery to 
ripen in after-years. Follow these lessons 
legitimately, and you lodge in the criminal 
court, or some such a place. The criminal 
or worthless character of to-day was back 
yonder the fond little play-boy of a doting 
mother, whose friend or nurse planted the 
seeds of this present distress. 

The most effectual lessons in disobedience, 
self-will, and family distress, are often admin- 
istered in family visiting, which at the time is 
regarded mere child's-play. That which is 
jest to the man is a serious lesson in practical 
life to the little prattling boy. 



Common Pakental Ckuelties. 49 

A cliild knows and practices what he is 
taught. Beyond this the instincts of nature 
control him, and often lead him to ruin. How 
can it be expected that a child will submit to 
control if frequently suffered to have his own 
way when questions of control arise ? What 
is sinful life but self -gratification ? It is not 
the doing of this or that specifically, but the 
following of one's self-will rather than yield- 
ing to rightful authority. Who has discov- 
ered, and where did the information come 
from, that proper Christian cross-bearing was 
less useful, less applicable, less necessary, or 
less practicable, in the cradle and nursery than 
in maturer years ? The laws of nature or of 
grace are not to be reversed to suit either the 
ignorance or the whims of either parents or 
children. Cross-bearing no more interferes 
with the proper flow and enjoyment of life in 
children than in those of maturer years. 
4 



50 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

TOO LATE, TOO LATE. 

"VTT^HAT a world of complaint we have 
V V about bad children! The world seems 
full of bad children. And yet whatever bad 
children there may be were made so by their 
parents. God makes no bad children. And 
now the hypercritic interpreters of Solomon 
and Paul are distressed, lest our children 
should be regarded as something above or dif- 
ferent from so many masses of moral putrid- 
ity and corruption. Still I will insist that God 
makes no bad children — parents do it. God 
makes nothing bad. The moral state of young 
children will be looked at after awhile. At 
the present it may suffice to say to parents that 
God gave you good children, and gave you di- 
rections how to train them; but by negligence 
and thoughtlessness of duty you suffered them 
to follow their natural instincts, go astray, and 
so they very early became very bad. One 
says, " O how I have tried, and labored, and 
prayed, to make my boy obedient! I am fully 
aware of the necessity, but have not been able; 
I am sure I have done my best." 



Too Late, Too Late. 51 

Yes, my dear woman, yon have labored 
enongh with that one boy to snffice for the suc- 
cessful training of twenty or fifty just snch 
boys. One-twentieth part, and far less, of this 
labor and anxiety, applied at the proper time, 
would have made him a docile, cheerful, obe- 
dient child, always delighted to meet his moth- 
er's wishes, and obey her commands. You be- 
gan too late — too late, entirely too late. He 
was a hardened veteran in disobedience, long 
practiced and expert, at two years old, and that 
was about as early as you began seriously to 
think of controlling him. At the first, when 
God placed him in your control, he was scarce- 
ly disobedient at all. A one-musquito-power 
engine would have turned him in any direc- 
tion; but at two or three years, a forty-horse- 
power engine is not sufficient. You sat still 
and saw the demon grow, until now it is quite 
beyond any force you can apply. Nature's 
time to begin was a long ways past before you 
began. 

Labor amounts to nothing, anxiety and care 
amount to nothing, prayer amounts to noth- 
ing, unless timely and wisely applied. A cup 
of water rightly applied would have arrested 
the fire at the beginning, but now the engines 
cannot do it. Half the labor of the world, and 



52 Chkistian Ceadlehood. 

far more, is useless, because of untimely and 
unwise application. 

" Just see how Bettie struck Harry in the 
eye! She has almost put his eye out; and O I 
have tried so much to break her of that wretch- 
ed temper! " But, madam, you began too late. 
She will never be cured until she goes into her 
grave. She is destined irretrievably to a sour, 
harsh, disagreeable temper, that will more or 
less annoy her neighbors and friends through 
life. Should she live to become a mother of 
a family, she will most likely bequeath a disa- 
greeable, unamiable temper to her children. 
But she herself, come what may, is greatly and 
hopelessly injured for life. Female amiability 
is forever lost to her. False glosses may cov- 
er up her deformities considerably; pride of 
appearance, as she nears and enters woman- 
hood, will come largely to her assistance. She 
may succeed somewhat, as most other women 
do, in hiding her real character from public 
view, and living a life of falsehood, but true 
womanhood she can never reach. The disobedi- 
ent anger was not arrested in its early risings in 
the cradle; the habit is set, and nothing earthly 
can break its force. Divine grace may soften it 
more or less, pride and shame may smooth the 
outside a little, but the time for cure is past. 



Too Late, Too Late. 53 

" "Well, I expect my children are about like 
those of other people; and I know I try as 
much as any one can, and it is just impossible 
to make children obedient." 

You are entirely correct. It is impossible 
if the work ' is to be begun and conducted as 
you tried to do it. Tou governed your chil- 
dren ten times more than there was any neces- 
sity for, but it availed nothing because you 
began too late. You did not begin at the first. 

"Willie is seven years old. A more cheerful, 
happy, and contented child I have not known. 
Since a year old he has scarcely, if at all, been 
known to cry aloud, except, perhaps, for an 
instant, on getting hurt, or some such cause. 
Nature did no more for him than for ordinary 
children, and very little labor has ever been 
expended on him to make him obedient, but 
that little was employed mostly before he was 
six months or a year old, with a little attention 
afterward. He knows little or nothing about 
persistent disobedience. In his childish heed- 
lessness he sometimes requires to be spoken to 
a second time, but he never obeys with lagging 
reluctance. Obedience is his habit; he never 
learned any thing else; his habit of doing as 
he was told was a settled matter long before 
he knew there was any other way. If his play 



54 Christian Cradlehood. 

and thoughtless inattention betrays him into 
something probably forbidden, it gives pain, 
and he lights up with sparkling gladness on 
learning it was not forbidden. He is never 
afraid of punishment, for he was never pun- 
ished. 

A child accustomed to obedience regulates 
all his wants accordingly. His wants are con- 
tingent on leave being given. He is accus- 
tomed to believe that his parents know best. 
It is the disobedience that is slavish, irksome, 
and hard to bear. Crying children were made 
so by the mother. This rule is never-failing: 
no child will cry after a year old or so, and keep 
it up several minutes at a time, except as the 
result of shameful neglect on the part of the 
parents. Even if hurt pretty badly, he will 
cringe and whimper a little; but to keep up a 
cry, cry for five or ten minutes, or longer, is 
certain evidence of gross negligence on the 
part of the parents. But after the habit of 
crying for every disagreeable trifle becomes 
established, it is impracticable to stop it except 
by cruelly beating the child into a slavish sub- 
mission which degrades and humiliates him so 
that he never, or scarcely ever, fully forgets it. 

All the low-toned, cross, and ill-tempered 
men and women were made so in the training. 



Too Late, Too Late. 55 

Sick children don't cry any more than well 
ones if properly taught from the first. 

It is very unreasonable to suppose, as most 
people do, that young children must needs cry 
and fret a great deal in sickness. Unruly and 
ungovernable children, accustomed to be con- 
trolled only by coaxing, threatening, and hire, 
will of course carry out their accustomed habit 
in sickness. A crying, fretting, teasing child, 
already self - harassed into a fever, "is very 
unwell to-day, poor child!" and the mother 
considers "quite unwell" a sufficient reason 
for a day full of distress to both child and 
household. Disobedient children sometimes 
get sick, and then trouble is on hand. The 
proper administration of medicine is impossi- 
ble. "A sick child must be indulged," it is 
said: "how can a sick child be controlled?" 
Alas! your sick child cannot be controlled, and 
so he must suffer on. There is no remedy. 
But a child accustomed to obedience is as 
readily and cheerfully obedient in sickness as 
in health. 



56 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

CHILDREN MUST BE BROKEN. 

FROM all I can learn on this subject, I 
conclude that children from the cradle to 
adult years are very much what their parents 
prepare them to be. This rule will admit of 
a little flexibility, but not much. Habits are 
made up of thousands of little actions which 
form themselves into settled customs, which 
compose what we call character. Children are 
born with very little character; but character 
is formed at a much earlier period than many 
suppose. It is generally very much, if not in 
most cases, unchangeably shaped in the third 
or fourth year, if not earlier. Of course, it has 
not much strength in those early periods, but 
it is formed, and set a-going. 

It is not true that children are born bad; 
neither is it true that they are born good. 
They are almost a moral blank, or negative, or 
innocent. He never committed crime, nor 
even meditated it. He is born with one single 
misfortune, or inheritance, call it what you 
may, and that is latent at first, though it be- 
gins to develop at a very early period. This 



Children must be Broken. 57 

latent inheritance is self-will, a stiff neck, un- 
willingness to submit to authority outside him- 
self. It is not disobedience, but a spirit or 
tendency thereto. The child is not personally 
corrupt, but has an innate and certain tenden- 
cy to corruption. He is not a sinner, but has 
an innate tendency that way, which we call 
nature, or natural corruption. 

Now, this spirit of self - will, independence, 
or disobedience, must be removed before such 
person can become a true man or woman. It 
cannot be removed by mere outside moral 
culture. It is not flexible, and will not bend. 
Nature forbids it. It must be broken. We 
sometimes speak of breaking a horse — he needs 
no breaking; he requires only training. Nei- 
ther would man need any thing but training 
if, like the horse ; he were to remain in the in- 
fantile or imbecile state. 

The young child knows nothing of a law of 
God; his parents are his lawgivers. But this 
loyalty soon begins to transfer to the Almighty. 
Now, if this self-will be thoroughly broken in 
the imbecile state, when it is so easily broken, 
then we have a conquered, subdued, obedient 
child to enter upon the responsibilities of life, 
instead of one with a refractory, unsubdued 
spirit. 



58 Christian Cradlehood. 

Let this great practical lesson be well learned 
and acted on, and society shall rise octave after 
octave, and childhood-life shall be of tenfold 
more value to mankind. 

But here we meet two classes of objections: 
the one is from the mother who "raised ten 
children," and knows this to be impossible. 
She has tried it faithfully, and knows, etc. 

The truth is, she knows nothing about it. 
She gave birth to these "ten children," and 
supplied some of their physical wants, but she 
never "raised" any. They grew up around 
her as willfully disobedient as she herself did, 
and as the bent and tendency of uncircum- 
cised and unsanctified nature requires. These 
mothers who know so much scarcely ever saw 
an instance of true obedience in their lives. 
A broken self-will in the cradle, leading to 
cheerful obedience, maintained by the constant 
care of a pious, intelligent mother, ministering 
nicely and naturally to the earliest and sim- 
plest religious lessons, are matters never 
dreamed of in their philosophy. These chil- 
dren of whom these mothers know so much 
were all hopelessly ruined, without a miracle 
of mercy, as they themselves were, before their 
"raising" began. 

The next objection is from superficial-think- 



Cpiildken must be Broken. 59 

ing Christian teachers. They do not see how 
there can be personal Christianity unless by 
a conversion following some years at least of 
wicked life. 

It is very certain that conversion, or regen- 
eration, , call it what yon may, must always 
begin a religions life. But I do not see the 
necessity of waiting five, ten, or twenty years 
for the conversion, or of waiting at all. Why 
not make the most direct effort at conversion 
at the first? Is not the Christian religion per- 
fectly adapted to the condition of man in all 
ages and in all circumstances ? Then what do 
we wait for? And yet look at our practice! 
What efforts do we make for early conversion? 
None ! I look over the entire field of pastoral 
theology, ministerial, domestic, social, and lit- 
erary, and I repeat the answer to this vital 
question of early conversion, and I declare that 
in the course of my life I have not known an 
effort made, large or small, for the conversion 
of young children. I never heard the subject 
alluded to in the pulpit, even in the most gen- 
eral way; nor did I ever read it in a book 
except the Bible — there I read it abundantly. 
Nor do I remember to have heard a minister, 
or man, or woman, allude to the subject in con- 
versation except in the most general way. The 



60 Christian Cradlehood. 

only religious teaching and preaching I know 
any thing about relates exclusively to persons 
who have lived, at the very least, five or ten 
years in open sinful life! Indeed, it is well 
known that very nearly all our ministerial and 
literary effort applies to the reclamation of 
persons who have lived in sin twenty years 
and upward. 

We have practically settled down upon the 
doctrine that ten or twenty years of sinful life 
is a condition precedent to religion. I do not 
believe that willful disobedience, continued at 
all, a day, a week, or ten years, is useful at all, 
but is bad, and that continually, and bad for 
every thing. Sin, much or little, is bad, and 
wholly bad. A conversion at ten years is 
much better than no conversion at all; but 
that same case would have led to a better life, 
other things equal, if the conversion had taken 
place eight or nine years earlier. And yet I 
have heard, by Christian ministers, congratu- 
latory remarks on " early conversion" at ten 
or fifteen years ! Conversion breaks the stub- 
born self-will, and religious life keeps it sub- 
dued. 



Obedience is not Slavish. 61 



CHAPTER IX. 

OBEDIENCE IS NOT SLAVISH. 

IT was Selkirk who said, " I am monarch of 
all I survey." So far from obedience being 
slavish, it is the only thing that does, or can, 
produce the largest liberty. There is nothing 
good, either in individual or social life, that is 
not the product of obedience to rightful author- 
ity, nor nothing bad that does not grow out of 
disobedience. Obedience is the foundation of 
loveliness in children, of womanliness and 
manliness in youth, of amiability in maturer 
life, and Christian excellence in all. It is the 
only constitutional distinction between right 
and wrong, between high character and low 
character. Disobedience is the prime, approx- 
imate, immediate, remote, and efficient cause 
of all evil in persons and society. It causes all 
the troubles in the family and out of the fam- 
ily. It produces all crime, fills all prisons, most 
of the early graves, and causes all the distress 
of mankind. Eight and wrong, happiness and 
unhappiness, freedom and slavishness, are but 
other names for obedience and disobedience. 



62 Cheistian Ceadlehood. 

The notion that obedience restricts liberty 
in young or old, is the climax of folly. Look 
at mankind anywhere, and you will find that it 
is the disobedient, and he alone, that is de- 
prived of liberty. It is the disobedient child 
alone who is treated slavishly, and governed 
almost beyond endurance, while the obedient 
one only is governed but little, and is free, 
cheerful, and happy. The more a child is dis- 
obedient, the more he is governed, a hundred 
to one, and the more he is curbed, restrained, 
hampered, and restricted in his wants. 

Just in proportion as a child's self-will rises, 
his imaginary wants increase, his whims be- 
come extravagant, until a trifle is magnified 
into great anxiety and irritation; instead of 
parental control, there has been no little par- 
ental contention, with alternate success and 
defeat, and in the end the child has undergone 
an amount of control, loss of liberty, real or 
imaginary wrong, and felt degradation greater 
in one hour of strife, than an obedient child 
would experience in a life-time. 

Two children want to ride. In the one case 
the mother says, "No, Mattie, you can't go; 
you must stay at home and play with sister." 
Mattie submits instantly, is not at all discom- 
fited, the disappointment is slight, and soon 



Obedience is not Slavish. 63 

forgotten. In the other case, Kate is told the 
same thing, but she has not the least notion of 
giving np the contest. Two or three succes- 
sive demands and denials produce a cry of re- 
sentment and determination to resist encroach- 
ments upon personal rights. Appeals for 
sympathy and protests against wrongs soon 
bring father and big sister into the strife. 
"What shall I do with the child?" exclaims 
the mother. " You are not dressed, and how 
can you go? There is not room for many in 
the carriage." And then changing the base 
of defense, in softened -tone, " Well, darling, 
never mind now; Charles shall get you a nice 
new carriage, and nice white horses, and shall 
ride you and sister away, away." But baby 
has heard such lies before to her heart's con- 
tent, and kicks and cries the harder. At 
length the child either succeeds by a clear and 
open victory, giving sure promise of success 
in the next battle, or if the denial be urgent, 
the poor girl is imprisoned by force like a 
criminal, and in distress no little she feels out- 
raged and determined to be more successful 
in the next battle. 

Now, in these two cases the disobedient 
child has been governed, her liberty restricted, 
and her wants and comfort abridged, a hun- 



64 Christian Cradlehood. 

dred-f old more than the other. Obedient chil- 
dren — that is, those taught obedience from the 
first — are governed very little; they need but 
little. Obedience is a habit. They have con- 
fidence ; or if more strictly theological language 
be preferred, they have fa ith in their parents, 
and submit lovingly and cheerfully. Those 
children who have been suffered to indulge a 
bad temper, and they alone, indulge in seasons 
of hatred toward their parents. They feel 
wronged and injured, and most assuredly they 
have been well-nigh ruined. 

At dinner-time Sally sees some company 
in the house, and whispers to mamma, " Will 
there be room for me? " "No, my child, you 
must wait." And Sally is off in the bed-room 
amusing herself without a murmur. But in 
another similar case the crying, the threaten- 
ing, the false promises, increase the restraint 
until the real hard pressure of iron force and 
cruel control, operating upon the tender, inex- 
perienced constitution, amounts to real distress 
in no small measure. 

It is both unjust and cruel to throw the 
blame on the child, and say he deserves it all. 
Certainly he is a bad boy — she is a girl of bad 
habits; but the parent, not the child, is the 
great wrong-doer. The parent stood by and 



Obedience is not Slavish. 65 

saw the bad habit rise from that which would 
not outweigh a feather, and grow and strength- 
en, and did not put forth a finger to restrain 
it, and the child could not do it. A very little 
well-directed effort back yonder would have 
saved all this sea of trouble, as well as the life- 
long degradation that is to follow. 

Children should be governed as children, 
not as prisoners or captives; nor, on the other 
hand, as dolls and playthings. They should 
have the largest liberty. Do n't attempt to put 
old heads on young shoulders — they won't 
grow. Let the boys go — and girls too — and 
romp, and play, and make a noise, and break 
things, if need be. Things are made to be 
broken, and throats are made for noise. But 
all this must be inside the strictest obedi- 
ence. There is plenty of noise for romp and 
play, but none for anger; and there are 
plenty of things to be broken by accident, 
and helter-skelter, but none for spite and self- 
will. 

It is an invariable rule that children are 
happy, and feel free, just in proportion as they 
are taught to be obedient, and those who en- 
joy the largest liberty are the least governed 
and most submissive. Children generally 
suffer a hundred-fold more government than is 
5 



66 Christian Cradlehood. 

necessary. An ounce of government in the 
cradle is worth a ton out of it. 

But no woman can govern children until she 
first learns to govern herself. Fretting, scold- 
ing, complaining, and threatening, on the part 
of a mother, will ruin any children. They 
never can make the men or women they would 
otherwise. 



Thoughtless Training. 67 



CHAPTER X. 

THOUGHTLESS TRAINING. 

THE child who is not required to obey, and 
take on a regular habit of obedience as a 
settled principle of life, is wronged by his par- 
ents out of his dearest and most valuable rights. 
The foolish neglect of many parents at this 
point is criminal. Disobedience, or reluctant 
obedience, which is the same thing, is incul- 
cated almost scientifically, as if it were the in- 
tention. The child is told by his mother every 
day, in various forms of expression, that he 
will have his own way, that she cannot control 
him. He is threatened with punishment fifty 
times a day, but such talk is mere idle words 
in the child's estimation. Children are imita- 
tive, and when they hear their parents tell 
things frequently which they know to be un- 
true they are sure to follow the example. 

Baby-talk, continued after the early dawn 
of the period when the child can discern ar- 
ticulate words, is less criminal than telling 
falsehoods, but it is a great disadvantage 
among children. A child can understand Ian- 



68 Christian Ceadlehood. 

guage very well long before he can utter a 
word. It is, then, very important that children 
hear words pronounced correctly in order that 
they may imitate them properly. Children 
accustomed to hear words mumbled, or half- 
pronounced, or with baby-pronunciation, will 
mumble and mispronounce their words likely 
through life. 

Putting children to sleep is a tax on house- 
hold labors of no small extent. The one or two 
hours' labor of each day is but a small part 
of it. The cross and ill humor, and peevish, 
fretful disposition it engenders, is a much 
larger item. The habit is never excusable. 
Almost the smallest amount of patience and 
common sense will easily establish the regular 
custom in any child of going to sleep when 
laid down for that purpose. And it is just as 
easy to establish the custom of rocking, or 
walking or rocking, a child to sleep. Any well- 
handled child a few months old will always go 
to sleep in two minutes when told to do so. 
But children who form their own habits hap- 
hazard, generally require to be put to sleep at 
a cost of no little time, trouble, and vexation. 

Although there is great difference in the 
natural disposition of children, some more or 
less inclined to this or that trait of character, 



Thoughtless Training. 69 

yet they are all alike in this one thing — they 
are all easily susceptible of forming habits. 
Accustom children to any thing possible, and 
they tend with almost irresistible strength to 
that thing. Indeed, what is oftentimes re- 
garded as a natural trait of character is noth- 
ing more than a habit early formed. No 
natural characteristic, however distinct and 
specific it may be, is at the first stronger than 
a zephyr. Its strength is acquired by habit 
invariably. 

Parents generally bring up their children 
about as they themselves were brought up. 
Here lies the difficulty. But it must be over- 
come. Parents must learn the necessity of 
cradle-government. It must be enforced by 
all the means at our command. 

Extreme indiscretion is very frequently seen 
in parents and others talking about children — 
relating their exploits or their delinquencies 
in their presence. The one tends rapidly and 
strongly to excite pride and fanciful dreams of 
greatness, and puff up with wild notions of 
superiority, while the other tends to depress 
laudable feelings, and make the child feel 
mean and degraded, and to rate himself below 
his superiors. If a little girl hear it said that 
she is a very bad girl, or the worst girl in the 



70 Christian Cradlehood. 

neighborhood, she must either feel degraded 
or believe the person saying so tells a false- 
hood, though it be her father or mother. The 
child of two years is listening attentively to 
every word uttered in his hearing about him. 

But of all the wrongs and disadvantages 
children are subject to at the hands of the 
mother, a fretful, scolding, or threatening 
treatment is the most damaging. The chil- 
dren of a woman w T ho cannot patiently govern 
herself must suffer on through life. Quit, O 
quit threatening, scolding, and complaining! 
Be patient. Fathers are almost always too 
loose and indulgent, or too rigid. A boy or 
girl of six years and tolerably developed mind 
has feelings, and expects them to be respected. 
A harsh denunciation or coarse threat of pun- 
ishment is not soon forgotten by a child of 
tone and high mind. Such treatment tends to 
brutalize the feelings and corrupt the man- 
ners. 



Whipping Children. 71 



CHAPTEE XI. 

WHIPPING children. 

~\T7~HIPPING children with a rod or other 
V V instrument of torture is a simple, cruel, 
unmitigated barbarity. It belongs to darker 
ages than these. In an enlightened age, and 
among civilized people, it is a crime that ought 
to be punished by the civil magistrate. 

And on this I suppose the antiquated wise- 
acres and old-granny philosophers will raise a 
shout of horror, lest the character of old King 
Solomon should be underrated; for they revere 
him as a great child- whipper. And so every 
child must take his share of the birch and the 
cudgel, if for no other good reason, to preserve 
the good character of the great Israelitish 
king. Solomon may have been a great whip- 
per of children; but if so, he does not seem to 
have been remarkably successful in the busi- 
ness. 

I will not undertake to measure arms with 
Solomon, nor will I agree to be governed by 
all his interpreters. If he undertook to change 
the constitution of nature — which, however, I 



72 Christian Cradlehood. 

am not able to see that he did — then I do not 
admit that he had a right to do so. God made 
a distinction between men and brutes, and 
even brutes would not need to be governed 
with a club if the law of governmental kind- 
ness, obedience, and control, were well enforced 
with them from the beginning. I do not know 
that brutes would need club-government if 
they were taken in hand at the beginning, and 
governed properly. 

That children are very frequently — nay, 
very generally — found in a condition where 
the whip is a necessity is very certain; and it 
is for this necessity that the parent needs and 
deserves the punishment I prescribe for them. 
The child created the necessity without know- 
ing it: the parents — with their eyes open, and 
whose special duty it was to prevent it, and 
when it might be easily prevented — stood by 
with folded arms and saw this necessity grow 
from a germ as light as a feather to the strength 
of half a hurricane. The parent may accuse 
Nature, but Nature hurls back the complaint 
in thunder-tones. Any half -fool parents can 
read, if they have no eyes to see, that the child 
is in constant tendency to evil and ruin. But 
what are parents made for, and put here for, 
but to counteract and prevent the growth of 



Whipping Childeen. 73 

this tendency? None but a sluggard com- 
plains that weeds grow; for what are plows, 
and hoes, and muscle, and health, made for? 
Does not everybody know that the world, whole- 
sale, would soon become a pandemonium but 
for man's labor interworking with the grace 
and mercy of God? That the rod of restraint 
is often necessary is well known. So are the 
prison and the gallows. But that does not 
prove that all men must be hanged, or that 
everybody should be put in the penitentiary. 
May not this evil tendency be headed off? 
May not a habit of obedience be formed de- 
spite and in the teeth of this evil tendency? 
This I understand to be the mission of Chris- 
tianity and parenthood. 

A brute cares for the whip just in propor- 
tion to the measure of its sting; but to a human 
person, young or old, it degrades, blunts, and 
brutalizes the feelings, benumbs the sensibil- 
ities, and greatly wounds the ennobling and 
healthful feelings of proper self-esteem. The 
child may see he had done wrong, but he will 
reluctantly, if at all, forgive the hand that in- 
flicted the blows. 

Punishment of this sort restrains bad con- 
duct only from a motive as bad as the conduct 
which it is intended to prevent. It is the re- 



74 Christian Cradlehood. 

straint of fear, producing mortification and 
debasement in a child as does the pillory and 
prison costume in grown persons. It paralyzes 
self-respect, and makes the criminal feel his 
criminality, which tends to low desperation 
and a do n't-care condition of desperation. No 
child properly trained from the first can ever 
need the rod. Its need is the direct fruit of 
parental neglect. It is a fool's answer to plead 
necessity. The parent created the necessity. 

All penal government is at best but a dernier 
ressort, and its application to the cradle or any 
other part of the family is a miserable subter- 
fuge which at least punishes the wrong per- 
son. It is bad enough to brutalize degraded 
criminals with it where other forms of control 
cannot be made to answer the purpose of pub- 
lic safety; but to degrade young children to 
such an ordeal of control is a showing-up of 
the savage side of life in a manner not flatter- 
ing to public intelligence. A household where 
the rod is a factor in family government is 
an ill-regulated, badly-governed, and unhappy 
household. And yet the family where the rod 
has become necessary, and is dispensed with, 
is in a far worse condition. Children brought 
up under birch-law, whether in fact with the 
stripes or in fear of them by threats and con- 



Whipping Childeen. 75 

stant reminder, grow up with blunted feelings 
and mean ideas o£ both themselves and their 
parents. 

A minister once said to me that he knew no 
other way to control young children but by 
fear. And so society is degraded; and the 
Church greatly injured, by the ignorant notion 
that children must be kept under fear in order 
to obedience! Nothing belonging to animal 
life, that ever was governed, is so easily gov- 
erned as children; and yet half the trouble 
and misfortune of mankind, if not far more, is 
the almost immediate result of ignorance and 
carelessness on this subject. 

The following from an anonymous writer 
I commend to the sober reflection of sober- 
minded men and women: 

If it were possible, in any way, to get a statistical sum- 
ming-up and a tangible presentation of the amount of phys- 
ical pain inflicted by parents on children under twelve 
years of age, the most callous-hearted would be surprised 
and shocked. If it were possible to add to this estimate 
an accurate and scientific demonstration of the extent to 
which such pain, by weakening the nervous system, and 
exhausting its capacity to resist disease, diminishes chil- 
dren's chances for life, the world would stand aghast. 

Too little has been said upon this point. The oppo- 
nents of corporal punishment usually approach the sub- 
ject either from the sentimental or the moral stand-point. 
The argument on either of these grounds can be made 



76 Christian Cradlehood. 

strong enough, one would suppose, to paralyze every hand 
lifted to strike a child. But the question of the direct 
and lasting physical effect of the blows — even of one blow 
on the delicate tissues of a child's body, on the frail and 
trembling nerves, on the sensitive organization which is 
trying under a thousand unfavoring conditions to adjust 
itself to the hard work of both living and growing — has 
yet to be properly considered. 

Every one knows the sudden sense of insupportable 
pain, sometimes producing even dizziness and nausea, 
which follows the accidental hitting of the elbow against 
a hard substance. It does not need that the blow be very 
hard to bring involuntary tears to adult eyes. But what 
is such pain as this in comparison with the pain of a dozen 
or more quick, tingling blows from a heavy hand on flesh 
which is, which must be, as much more sensitive than 
ours as are the souls which dwell in it purer than ours? 
Add to this physical pain the overwhelming terror which 
only utter helplessness can feel, and which is the most 
recognizable quality in the cry of a very young child 
under whipping ; add the instinctive sense of disgrace, of 
outrage, which often keeps the older child stubborn and 
still throughout, and you have an amount and an intensity 
of suffering from which even tried nerves might shrink. 
Again, who does not know, at least, what woman does not 
know, that violent weeping, for even a very short time, is 
quite enough to cause a feeling of languor and depression, 
of nervous exhaustion for a whole day? Yet it does not 
seem to occur to mothers that little children must feel 
this, in proportion to the length of time and violence of 
this crying, far more than grown people. Who has not 
often seen a poor child receive, within an hour or two of 
the first whipping, a second one for some small ebullition 



Whipping Children. 77 

of nervous irritability which was simply inevitable from 
its spent and worn condition? 

It is safe to say that, in families where whipping is reg- 
ularly recognized as a punishment, few children under ten 
years of age have less than one whipping a week. Some- 
times they have more, sometimes the whipping is very 
severe. Thus you have in one short year sixty or seventy 
occasions on which for a greater or less time, say from one 
to three hours, the child's nervous system is subjected to a 
tremendous strain from the effects of terror and physical 
pain, combined with long crying. Will any physician tell 
us that this fact is not an element in that child's physical 
condition at the end of that year? Will any physician 
dare to say that there may not be in that child's life crises 
when the issues of life and death will be so equally bal- 
anced that the tenth part of the nervous force lost in such 
fits of crying, and in the endurance of such pain, could 
turn the scale ? 

Nature's retributions, like her rewards, are cumulative. 
Because her sentences against evil works are not executed 
speedily, therefore the hearts of the sons of men are fully 
set in them to do evil. But the sentence always is exe- 
cuted, sooner or later, and that inexorably. Your son, O 
unthinking mothers ! may fall by the way in the full prime 
of his manhood for lack of that strength which his infancy 
spent in enduring your hasty and severe punishments. 

Suppose that such punishment of children had been 
unheard of till now; suppose that the idea had yester- 
day been suggested for the first time that by inflicting 
physical pain on a child's body you might make him recol- 
lect certain truths ; and suppose that, instead of whipping, 
a very .moderate and harmless degree of pricking with 
pins, pr cutting with knives, or burning with fire, had ^een 



78 Christian Cradlehood. 

suggested — would not fathers and mothers have cried out 
all over the land at the inhumanity of the idea? 

But I think it would not be easy to show in what wise 
small pricks or cuts are more inhuman than blows, or 
why lying may not be as legitimately cured by blisters 
made with a hot coal as by black and blue spots made 
with a ruler. The principle is the same ; and if the prin- 
ciple be right, why not multiply methods? This one sug- 
gestion, candidly considered, should be enough to open all 
parents' eyes to the enormity of whipping. How many a 
loving mother will, without any thought of cruelty, inflict 
half-a-dozen quick blows on the little hand of her child, 
when she could no more take a pin and make the same 
number of thrusts into the tender flesh than she could 
bind the baby on a rack ! Yet the pin-thrusts would hurt 
far less, and would probably make a deeper impression on 
the child's mind. 



A Threatening Government. 79 



CHAPTEE XII. 

A THREATENING GOVERNMENT. 

NEXT to whipping government stands a 
threatening government. This is of the 
same nature as the former, though it may not 
have all its follies and iniquities. Civil gov- 
ernment is necessarily a threatening govern- 
ment. Penal laws are in the nature of a threat, 
or in terrorem. It is the best mode of govern- 
ing adult people that jurisconsults have dis- 
covered or legislatures have adopted. But it 
is applicable to grown persons, and not to chil- 
dren, for the following reasons : 

The civil magistrate cannot have immediate 
control of vicious people. He is not always 
immediately present, with authority and ad- 
monition, to prevent and restrain the meditat- 
ing offender. The would-be criminal is per- 
sonally free to do, and public law can only 
threaten beforehand and execute afterward. 
But this wide separation does not exist be- 
tween the governor and the governed in the 
case of parent and child. The parent can ex- 
ercise immediate control. Again, a penal law 



80 Christian Cradlehood. 

is soon forgotten by a child. But in case of 
such offenses as are called crimes and mis- 
demeanors, the man or woman is supposed to 
know all about them, and, in premeditating 
crime, to run the chances of detection and 
punishment. This is entirely too distant for 
child-government. He needs admonition for- 
ty times a day for the same offense, or class of 
offenses. 

" Now, Sallie, if I catch you with your apron 
wet this way again to-day I'll whip you well." 
How long is Sallie going to remember that? 
Perhaps five minutes or three. Forty dozen 
things happen before night, not anticipated or 
taken into the account when this law to pre- 
vent the wetting of aprons was enacted and 
promulgated. Like many other laws, it has 
encountered so many changes in the habits 
and custoins of mankind that it has long since 
become obsolete. 

A parent in the habit of threatening, threat- 
ens forty things an hour, and thirty-nine of 
them are forgotten before the close of the hour; 
so they amount to a tirade of meaningless de- 
niinciation. Any child with common sense 
cannot fail to so understand them. He has 
heard thousands of such laws promulgated, 
but does not remember to ever have known 



A Threatening Government. 81 

one specifically executed. In his estimation, 
it is a mere customary mode of scolding. 

Or if, in some rare instances, the boy or girl 
may attach some seriousness to the threat, it 
can have but the same moral effect as the whip- 
ping would have. It is part and parcel of the 
whipping government. 

This is not the philosophy of child-government. 
It is adapted to the government of old, shrewd 
violators of law, who premeditate and arrange 
for crime. Young children never do this. 
They act upon an instantaneous impulse, and 
should therefore be governed by two different 
principles of control. What are these? 

The reader who has somewhat carefully fol- 
lowed me thus far need scarcely be told. The 
first principle of infantile control is habit. 
Away with fear, and threat, and birch govern- 
ment! They belong to the ignorance and cru- 
elties of dark and savage life. Habit is the 
best word I can find in the language to express 
the precise idea. It is proverbially " second 
nature " — so described by Webster in defining 
the term. Habit is almost equivalent to his 
nature — it is only secondary thereto. One of 
the easiest things to do with any and all chil- 
dren is to establish a habit — any habit of doing 
any thing not extremely inconvenient or diffi- 
6 



82 Christian Cradlehood. 

cult. It is very little, if, indeed, any more, 
trouble to establish a habit of obedience than 
of disobedience. Almost the slightest care, 
with a little constant attention, will fix the 
habit, if taken in time; but if neglected at the 
first, and attempted after awhile, it is utterly 
impracticable. 

A pebble in the streamlet scant 

Has changed the course of many a river ; 

A dew-drop on the baby-plant 

Has warped the giant oak forever ! 

It is an ignorant falsehood upon human nat- 
ure to suppose it at all difficult to change rad- 
ically and thoroughly all or any of the natural 
habitudes of life if taken in hand at the first. 
Kaspar Hauser lived to the years of manhood 
with all the ordinary habits of life thorough- 
ly and radically changed, and it required no 
more effort or labor than to establish any one 
mere commonplace habit. Bad habits will 
set in of themselves without assistance, because 
nature tends that way. Good habits require 
a little assistance, but not much. 

Habit-government — kind, simple, affection- 
ate habit-government — is the kind adapted to 
the cradle, the nursery, and the family. It is 
not true that children, at the first, are the half- 
monkey and half-brutish kind of creatures they 



A Threatening Government. 83 

often grow to be in a short time afterward. 
And it is about as easy as it is common for 
indolent, cowardly, and incompetent parents to 
shift their own miserable delinquencies on to 
their children, and cry out, " O what bad chil- 
dren ! " 

That children are bad, very bad, uniformly 
bad, even much worse than they are uniformly 
esteemed to be, is very readily believed; but 
that parents are primarily answerable for nine- 
tenths of this sea of evil, is also as true. They 
were placed there for the express purpose of 
changing this natural current tending to these 
evils of life, and charged to see we]l to it at 
the first, when the tiny current barely moves at 
all; but instead of doing so, they say, "Surely 
a current so slow and so small can do no harm," 
and they wait awhile. At one or two years 
they find the current a little hard to control, 
and they vainly say, " I will wait till I can rea- 
son with him." And by this time both the 
volume and the momentum have increased to 
Niagara proportions. And then the cry is, 
"O what a bad nature!" heaping their own 
sins and delinquencies on the shoulders of their 
children. 

The government of threatening is a govern- 
ment of debasement and degradation. Chil- 



84 Christian Cradlehood. 

clren over whom the rod in terrorem is exhib- 
ited a dozen times a day are degraded and 
debased in their estimation. " You deserve a 
good thrashing, you good-for-nothing fellow! " 
"Go and bring me a good switch here this 
minute!" "You do that again, Miss, and I 
will whip you well! " 

It is impossible for children to grow up 
under such miserable government, and reach 
manhood, or even youthhood, with any sort of 
proper feelings of respect for either themselves 
or their parents. 



Honor and Manliness in Children. 85 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

HONOR AND MANLINESS IN CHILDREN. 

CHILDREN are at a very early age sus- 
ceptible of a high sense of honor, integ- 
rity, and manly bearing. And the importance 
of cultivating this principle cannot be overes- 
timated. In this two extremes are to be care- 
fully avoided. One of these extremes is fool- 
ish pride and self-importance, and the other 
slavish fear and subservient degradation. 

While boys from five years and upward should 
be taught carefully to estimate and preserve 
from waste their own trinkets, books, cloth- 
ing, etc., they should never, until near matu- 
rity, be indulged in the ownership of property 
of value. This custom invests them with high 
notions of self-importance, and undue, and un- 
manly, and unbecoming principles. 

On the other hand, children should not be 
degraded into menials, and made to feel that 
they occupy a half-criminal or low position. 
Children of all ages should be made to feel 
that they are the companions, but not equals, 
of their parents and friends. Obedience being 



86 Christian Cradlehood. 

a well-established habit, it is not irksome, dis- 
honorable, or degrading. Being taught that 
it is right, decorous, and honorable, it is not 
submitted to, but rather sought for, courted, 
and esteemed, as a mark of honor and pro- 
priety. 

Threats, penal fears, a rod in sight or indi- 
cated as a means of government, tend to slav- 
ishness and feelings of humility and degrada- 
tion. Government and coercion are very dif- 
ferent things. 

"Now, if you do that again I'll whip you 
well. Do you see those two switches laid up 
there?" It is humanly impossible for that 
little girl or boy to desist from the forbidden 
action without feelings of slavish meanness. 
How different would it be for little Lizzie or 
George, accustomed to honorable and digni- 
fied obedience, to be addressed on this wise : 
"Now, my child, you know I don't want you 
to do that." That stimulates George's ambi- 
tion and self-respect, and his obedience is his 
delight. To such a mandate Lizzie's little 
heart responds in cheerfulness; no law is so 
potent with her as her mother's wishes. 

"Harry, if you don't behave yourself I'll 
tell your father the moment he comes home, 
and I '11 make him stripe you well, you good- 



Honok and Manliness in Childken. 87 

for-nothing fellow! You are the worst boy I 
ever did see." And that unfortunate boy, per- 
haps nearly as vicious as unfortunate, is com- 
pelled to drag out a miserable boyhood under 
the imbecile and cowardly tyranny of a fool- 
ish and miserably incompetent mother. And 
when Harry gets to be sixteen or eighteen, 
and finding home disagreeable, seeks compan- 
ionship in company as bad as himself, and 
drunkenness and the criminal court fall nat- 
urally into line, the ignorant and badly-raised 
mother considers herself "unfortunate." 

How often has that little girl been threat- 
ened with the rod, or the palm of punishment, 
and sometimes the threats executed, because, 
as she has been a hundred times told, she was 
"as bad as she could be!" Now, there is no 
way possible by which that girl can be relieved 
from the conviction that she is a mean, vicious, 
and degraded creature, far below the level of 
her associates, but by believing her mother to 
be a common liar and slanderer at home. 

And for such a girl to grow to womanhood 
with self-respect and elevated notions of vir- 
tue and amiability, is a simple impossibility. 
Human nature does not admit of it. As she 
nears maturity, pride comes to her assistance; 
she tries to cover over her moral deformities 



88 Cheistian Ceadlehood. 

as well as she can conveniently: divine grace 
may do much for her, but high womanhood is 
beyond her reach forever. This world has 
natural laws, and they are immutable. 



Eeligious Capacity of Childken. 89 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

THE EELIGIOUS CAPACITY OF CHILDKEN. 

AND so here conies up the old question of 
original sin, and its application to young 
children, with its great variety of real or sup- 
posed issues. I will try to simplify them. 
They arise largely out of ambiguity and loose- 
ness of language, and a pertinacious adher- 
ence to set phrases and chosen sectarian words. 

On the one hand, we have the doctrine that 
children are born pure, holy, upright, and they 
learn wickedness, and so become sinners by 
mere contact and association — that if let alone, 
and not interfered with by wicked persons, they 
would grow up religious, and so would need no 
regeneration. 

On the other hand, we have the teaching 
that children are born sinners, and necessarily 
grow up sinners, and can only be regenerated 
after they attain to age sufficient to enable 
them to understand the Christian system of 
Redemption by Christ crucified. 

The truth lies between these two extremes. 
It is very true that vicious association promotes 



90 Christian Cradlehood. 

sinfulness greatly. Evil communications cor- 
rupt good manners. But it is by no means 
true that there is a pure stock to begin with. 
Suppose ten or twenty infant children grow 
up from birth in exclusive association among 
themselves — if such a thing were possible— 
and they never hear an evil word, or see an evil 
action, except among themselves. Their moral 
and religious education is strictly negative. 
What sort of persons would they be ? They 
would grow up as wicked as very wickedness. 

Leaving out of the question right here the 
pure, original state, and fall of man in Adam, 
when we look at man as he is, Ave see him sub- 
ject to the same law of fruit, product, or result, 
as are the lower animals, or even the vegeta- 
ble kingdom. 

Look at any young animal. That individual 
has given no indication whatever as to what its 
course and habitudes of life will be; but when 
we see the race to which it belongs, we antici- 
pate its habitudes unmistakably. If it be a 
young tiger, though of itself as docile and 
harmless as a young puppy, our knowledge of 
its race compels us to conclude that if left to 
the bent of its nature, though perfectly inno- 
cent now, it will grow up cross, blood-thirsty, 
and ferocious. A young puppy will grow up 



Eeligious Capacity of Children. 91 

to bark and behave like other dogs. A young 
squirrel will, as it grows up, take on the hab- 
itudes of other squirrels. And so we speak 
very understandingly of the harnalessness of 
the dove, the cunning of the monkey and fox. 
Ducks will betake themselves immediately to 
the water, though they never saw it done be- 
fore. Horses, cows, and all other animals, 
have their exclusively peculiar modes and 
habits of life. And so of all animals. And 
nothing short of a violent, radical, and coercive 
training, will divert any single individual an- 
imal from the natural course pursued by its 
fellows. 

And just so of the vegetable department. 
When first out of the ground, the individual 
plant gives no indication whatever as to what 
it w T ill grow to be. No one can tell whether 
it will live a year, or a hundred years, and 
whether it will produce ears of corn, pumpkins, 
acorns, apples, or oranges. But the moment 
we discover the race it belongs to, we know 
unmistakably its natural course of future de- 
velopment. 

But itihy this plant always grows a hundred 
feet high, in a healthy condition, and bears 
acorns, and that one crawls on the ground, 
produces water-melons, and dies in six months, 



92 Cheistian Ceadlehood. 

we do not know. We say it is the nature of 
these vines to bear grapes, and of that kind of 
tree to bear apples; we always see them do 
that way, and that is all Ave know about it. 
The cause lies back behind < our reach. 

And so we expect an eagle, the moment it 
breaks the shell, and before, as it grows, to fly 
high, and build in the rocky cliffs; the whip- 
poorwill to fly near the ground, and always 
build in stumps and logs; the bullock to graze 
in the meadow, and the mule to be obstinate 
and contrary. But why these things are so we 
know not. We always see it so, and say, Such 
is their nature severally. We know no more. 
If necessary, we could give names to these 
primary propensions, but that would give us 
no information about the thing. 

And the same general law precisely applies 
to man. There is something primarily in an 
apple-tree that causes it to bear apples invari- 
ably, rather than grapes, or nuts. There is 
something primarily in a dog that makes him 
kind to his master and cross to strangers. And 
there is something primarily in man that causes 
him to behave contrary to the principles of 
love and justice enjoined in the Bible, both 
toward God and his fellow. 

The name of that cause is far less important 



Eeligious Capacity of Children. 93 

than the certainty of the cause itself. Many 
will dispute about the name; very few will 
deny the thing. Look at man the world oyer, 
and the rule is as invariable as that animals 
follow their natural instincts: he is disobedient 
to God and to the laws of kindness and justice 
toward his fellow. So there is obviously some- 
thing in him that causes this universal deprav- 
ity. Whether he inherits it from a near or 
remote ancestry as remote as Adam, or im- 
bibes it from his fellow by association, or 
from all these sources, though it be supposed 
to come from the sun that shines, or from the 
air we breathe, from seminal taint or from 
primordial taint, the thing is here, and these 
inquiries relate only to modes and the names 
of causes, while the fact does not admit of 
question. Things not debatable are not de- 
bated. Things without an apparent cause we 
call natural. So we call universal sinfulness 
natural. But while this badness is universal, 
it is not true that every thing in every man is 
bad. It is possible for a very wicked man to 
tell the truth. A sinful man is not, therefore, 
a fiend. 

Now, how does this universal badness apply 
to young children? and when does it begin to 
operate ? 



94 Cheistian Cradlehood. 

A tendency to sin is seen from the first; but 
there is a period — perhaps from six to nine or 
twelve months or more— of nearly or quite ab- 
solute nonage. In that period he is no more 
capable of sin than is a parrot. A habit of 
doing may be established in him, but he is no 
more a sinner than he is a walker or a talker. 
He is neither, because he has never walked, 
talked, nor sinned. You might as well call a 
horse a sinner! Did he do a thing that he 
cannot do? You may say he is in a sinful 
state — that is, a tendency to sin is in him just 
as a tendency to bark is in a dog so young that 
he never barked. 

When old enough to be capable of doing 
wrong he begins to do wrong, just as the crab- 
apple tree at the natural period begins to pro- 
duce sour fruit. This is the rule of Nature. 
But is there no escape from this early product 
of sour fruit? Are we absolutely shut up to 
this necessity? If so, then how long must this 
bitter fruit continue to grow? It ought to be 
changed from bad to good at the very earliest 
period possible under the laws of divine grace. 
How long must it continue ? But we are told 
that "the blood of Jesus Christ his Son 
cleanseth us from all sin." And this early sin 
is not only a part of a sinful life, but by far 



Eeligious Capacity of Children. 95 

the most important part of it. And is there 
no remedy for this vitally important part of j 
sin-life? To suppose it impossible for divine- 
grace to reach sin at this or any other period ; 
of life, or any other conditions of life, is, it 
would seem, to rob the Saviour of some of the 
laurels attributed to him in the Bible. 

Does the gospel limp just at this point? or 
would not a careful examination discover the 
lameness to be in our superficial way of ad- 
ministering it? Six months of sinful life in, 
say the second or third year, is more damag- 
ing than the same length of sinning at any 
other period. This is the formative period. 
And no grace adequate to it? Well, there 
ought to be; and there is. Grace is abundant, 
and applicable to all cases. 

We have got ourselves into the habit of re- 
garding divine grace inapplicable in childhood 
before the child is capable of understanding 
theological terms and doctrines, such as par- 
don, repentance, faith, sin, Christ, forgiveness, 
etc., whereas a child's creed is very much 
shorter than all that. It has but two words : 
being good, and being bad. To obey is to be 
good, to disobey is to be bad. He does not 
know the meaning of the word obedience, but 
he knows and understands the thing as well as 



96 Christian Cradlehood. 

he ever will. And being obedient evinces the 
highest style of saving grace. A child's faith 
contains very little systematic or dogmatic 
theology. 

The faith and reasoning that is of manhood 
is not required in a child, but a child's faith is. 
" Several ability " is the rule. Moral perception 
of right and wrong does not set in all at once. 
Its first opening dawn is not perceptible. Its 
maturity is not far from adult years. In this 
period of partial responsibility, as it might be 
called, the person is answerable according to 
the great law of equity, " several ability." The 
earliest capability of doing wrong is, of course, 
very feeble, but such capability at all implies 
a corresponding capability of doing right, or, 
in other words, of being religious. Unavoid- 
able sin is a contradiction. But there is no 
escape from a tendency to sin. This is uni- 
versal. It is called by various technical names 
— corruption, inbred sin, born in sin, deprav- 
ity, etc. But tendency to sin is not crime. 
Nature is not crime. A young crab-apple tree 
has done no more sourness than a young rose- 
bush. I did not make my nature, but am 
placed here with adequate means to prevent an 
evil development of it in both myself and my 
children. 



Beligious Capacity of Children. 97 

This is the unfortunate state in which we 
come into the world. The picture could scarce- 
ly be overdrawn. Without help we are destined 
to irretrievable ruin. But, thanks to God in 
Christ, help is provided. And this help does 
not propose relief from part of the trouble, but 
from the whole. It does not apply to us, after 
awhile, in some periods of life, but to the en- 
tire life from the womb to the winding-sheet. 

A Sunday-school magazine inquires, " Why 
should not a child become a disciple of Jesus 
as soon as he can understand that Christ loves 
him? Who can prescribe the age at which 
the Spirit of God begins to work in the heart 
of a child?" 

How well a child may "understand" the vi- 
carious nature of the death of Christ might be 
a difficult question, and be variously under- 
stood. A child of two or three years may be 
told, and so may know, the fact of the Saviour's 
death, though none of us may understand much 
about it. How is it ascertained that the Spirit 
of God begins to work in the heart of a child 
at all at some period along in the course of his 
life? This restricts the grace of Christ to a 
period. I think this grace begins with the 
life itself, long before the child has any sort 
of understanding about it. There is no graco- 



98 Christian Oradlehood. 

less period in childhood. Grace is unceasingly 
continuous in childhood as in youthhood or 
manhood. We restrict it when we suppose it 
to "begin" after awhile as the intellect opens. 

I know of no natural reason why a child 
may not feel divine love as early as he is ca- 
pable of feeling parental love. He is unable to 
define or understand it. It is a felt satisfac- 
tion of being good. This consciousness of 
doing right and of meeting approval is a very 
early development, and is what we mean in 
later years by "enjoying religion." There is 
nothing in either nature or grace that inhibits 
its early beginning. Natural depravity apper- 
tains no more to cradle-life than to youth or 
manhood. It is simply universal. The grace 
of Christ meets it in the cradle precisely as it 
does in maturer years. There is no more of a 
necessary sinful period somewhere in the first 
five or ten years than in later years. 

The above extract from the Sunday-school 
paper strikes the pivot of this question. Can 
a child be a Christian, in saving alliance with 
Christ, in high and wide contradistinction 
from other children who are irreligious and 
ungodly, at a period before either has reached 
a state of intellectual growth sufficient for 
them reasonably to understand the love of God 



Keligious Capacity of Children. 99 

through Christ in a proper theological sense? 
Or, in other words, does the Spirit of God be- 
gin to work in the heart of a child after, and 
only after, he has received and is intellectually 
able to digest the Bible teaching that Christ 
died for sinners, and will love and save him on 
condition' of his faith and obedience ? Does 
the Spirit of God begin to work in the heart of 
a child at some period in the course of his life? 
or is it continuous from the first? Suppose a 
child to be carefully and piously taught full, 
submissive obedience to the only authority he 
is capable of recognizing, and that in trying to 
be good he maintains such obedience in good 
faith. How far does that fall short of Bible 
piety? 

What is the religious condition during the 
space of at least a few years after he is first 
capable of sin, and therefore capable of Chris- 
tianity, and before he is capable of theological 
religion? By theological religion is meant an 
intellectual comprehension of Christ's merci- 
ful work. During these years he is commit- 
ting sin, and — no place for repentance ? No ; 
the gospel is suited to his condition also. Why 
not? 



100 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE RELIGIOUS CAPACITY OF CHILDREN- 
CONTINUED. 

AT how young a period are children per- 
sonally capable of true, genuine, saving 
faith ? This is an important question, and a 
point that is generally greatly overlooked. 
The question might be answered in this way: 
Children are capable of religion as soon as 
they are capable of doing wrong; or, as soon 
as they are capable of discerning between right 
and wrong; or, a capability of committing sin 
implies a capability of religion. 

The period of moral imbecility has hereto- 
fore been alluded to. It begins at birth, and 
continues probably, in many if not in most 
cases, six months or a year, perhaps longer — • 
may be two years or more. In this period the 
child knows nothing of right and wrong. I 
have spoken of it as absolute nonage. In this 
period he is incapable of religion, properly so 
called. The grace of Christ applies to him 
spontaneously, or passively, on his part. 

But as the moral sense begins to dawn, re- 



Beligious Capacity of Childken. 101 

ligious responsibility begins to attach; and 
they increase in precise proportion to each 
other. Along at the first they are both ex- 
ceedingly feeble. Where little is given little 
is required. Passive grace withdraws grad- 
ually, very gradually, as a sense of moral re- 
sponsibility increases, and does not depart 
entirely until both the intellect and moral 
sense assume their adult condition. 

So, in this respect, there are three moral 
periods in human life: first, the period of ab- 
solute nonage; second, of partial nonage; and 
third, of full personal responsibility. 

It is clear, therefore, that the period of per- 
sonal religion — that is, personal religious obli- 
gation — begins with the period of partial moral 
sense — the second period, as above described. 
This is, of course, the period Avhen sin is first 
possible, and, of course, the time when the 
Christian life proper ought to commence. 

But how frequently — nay, I might say, how 
uniformly — do we fail to even attempt to in- 
culcate Christianity at this tender period of 
life! The child of two, three, or four years, is 
generally treated as utterly incapable of relig- 
ion, as much so as a brute animal. 

There are no outward signs or indications 
that I know of by which we are able to test the 



102 Christian Cradlehood. 

existence of conversion with certainty at a 
very early period. Perhaps the age of about 
three years, or may be four or six, is about as 
early as certain evidence of genuine Christian 
faith or conversion is seen in a favorable con-' 
dition of things. But then we must not fail 
to remember that children are capable of 
knowledge, of feeling, and of emotion, and of 
penitence, long before they are capable of ex- 
pressing such experiences either by words or 
any other certain indications. 

It is *an axiom, or a truism, and therefore is 
not to be questioned, that at the very day or 
hour, if it could be identified, that the child is 
first capable of doing wrong, he is fully capa- 
ble of genuine conversion. And if conversion 
be delayed, it is the same kind of lengthening 
out an irreligious life as that which occurs at 
twenty or forty, but with this difference: early 
procrastination is worse and more deadly than 
later. This, I say, is a truism, because a child 
capable of doing wrong is for that reason capa- 
ble of doing right. Ability to sin, or do wrong, 
means ability to be religious, or do right. Ke- 
ligion is doing right; sin is doing wrong. 

O the miserable evils of depending solely 
upon camp-meetings and "revivals" for con- 
version! While I would not underrate them, 



Religious Capacity of Children. 103 

I would declare my belief that the nursery, 
properly used, possesses tenfold the convert- 
ing means of all the former put together. 
Hunting up sinners out of the nursery, how- 
ever positively valuable it may be, is but a 
mere dernier ressort, or last effort, to gather 
up neglected and squandered opportunities. 
Most children of religious families, or at least 
many of them, were converted in the nursery, 
and their religious state was neglected after- 
ward. Most of the people we preach to are 
backsliders. 

By proper training a child ought to grow up 
a converted Christian, and not be able to re- 
member to have been otherwise. This doc- 
trine is as old as the Bible. But how far this 
may be practicable in each or any particular 
case is another question. That will depend 
upon the piety and other qualifications of the 
parents and pastor, and the social surround- 
ings of the child. Here lie the great hinder- 
ances, and not in the capacity of the child for 
early Christianity. It is said of the great and 
good Richard Baxter that he became much 
troubled because he could not recollect when 
he was converted. But he saw that home- 
education and nursery training were as prop- 
erly means of, converting grace as the preach- 



104 Christian Cradlehood. 

ing at church, and thenceforward contented 
himself with the sweeter reflection that he had 
learned to love God early. 

It is a great mistake that a child cannot be 
converted until he can talk about it approv- 
ingly and theologically. The conversion of a 
child leaves him a child still. His is not the 
conversion of a person of years, with the re- 
flection of long habitual sins piled high upon 
him. And yet there are not two kinds of con- 
version; but there are a thousand kinds of 
experience and sensible effects of conversion. 
By what rule of infantile development or psy- 
chological science can we look for the same im- 
mediate effects of conversion in a child of three 
or four years and a veteran sinner of forty? 

To question the practicability of such early 
conversions involves the necessity of ascer- 
taining how much sin or how long a sinful life 
must be pursued in order to conversion ! And 
the objector must explain the principle upon 
which sin is a condition precedent to a religious 
life! 

Many persons seem to think, and often really 
believe, that religion does not pertain to chil- 
dren until they are nearly grown; that the 
most that need be done is to teach them good 
behavior, send 'them to Sunday-school when 



Keligious Capacity of Children. 105 

eight or nine, and hope that in some revival 
they may be induced to repent and be con- 
verted by the time they are twenty. This hope 
is generally realized in perhaps one case in 
twenty or forty. It is as humiliating to know 
as it is disgraceful to the Church that it may 
be known, that this is the general drift of 
thinking and feeling on the subject even 
amongst professedly religious people. 

And yet they are all in favor of early con- 
version. O yes, they say, let us have early 
conversions. But what they mean by early is 
from about fourteen to twenty. It is true, 
disgraceful as it may be to the religious press, 
religious authors, ministers and people, that 
the belief in the Churches in the practicabil- 
ity of substantial Christianity among children 
from three to eight years, is by no means gen- 
eral, or even uniform, much less is it universal. 
It is, therefore, not by any means uniform, 
even in my own Church, which I honestly be- 
lieve is a little ahead of all others in this re- 
spect, that practical efforts are made by pas- 
tors and parents for the conversion of our 
children before the age of about twelve years. 

Great honor to the Church and glory to God 
for the truly great and wonderful Sunday- 
school enterprise which has so suddenly and 



106 Christian Cradlehood. 

so grandly sprung up amongst us in the last 
half -century ! It is at once the glory and won- 
der of the age how we are beginning to have 
some little attention paid to early piety. When 
suitable teachers can be had, conversions among 
the scholars are sometimes and in some places 
occasional, and in some few cases somewhat 
frequent; but it has not been my good fort- 
une to have learned that many of these were 
under the age of ten years or thereabouts. 

It was my misfortune in early life to have 
known but little about Churches or their work, 
but for over fifty years past I have been some- 
what conversant with both; and it is with 
deep feelings of pain and mortification that I 
write, and only because I feel it a duty to do 
so, in order to call, if it may be, some attention 
to the subject — that in my experience in the 
period above named I have heard, I suppose, 
about the average amount of preaching, have 
read some religious books, and some religious 
newspapers, and other periodicals; I have even 
heard bishops preach; but to-day I am not 
able to remember where the high duty and 
great advantage of inculcating early piety — 
intelligible piety, and conversion at about the 
earliest practicable period — strongly urged, 
elaborately explained, and lengthily and labo- 



Eeligious Capacity of Children. 107 

riously enforced. I have occasionally seen the 
subject glanced at in very general terms — en- 
tirely general — have often seen the Saviour's 
words quoted, " Suffer the little children to 
come unto me," etc., but uniformly without 
adequate comment and enforcement, if any at 
all. I have conversed with a number of preach- 
ers on the subject, and have not met one who 
did not fully believe in the practicability of 
the full and proper conversion of pretty well 
instructed children, with favorable surround- 
ings, of three years old; but I did not hear 
him urge it, or perhaps allude to it, in the pul- 
pit, nor strongly impress it upon parents and 
little ones at home. 

For these delinquencies, if I am correct in 
so considering them, I am, in good faith, and 
I trust with some degree of humility and con- 
fession, willing to take my full share. It is 
only in the last ten or fifteen years that I have 
begun to wake lip to the importance of the 
subject; and my judgment admonishes me 
that even now I am but half awake. 

I have recently read a book of several hun- 
dred pages on this general subject, by an au- 
thor of no mean repute, and which I see pro- 
nounced one of the best on the subject. In 
this book I remember but a single sentence, 



108 Christian Ckadlehood. 

briefly dispatched, that distinctly alludes to 
the practicability of child-training from the 
first, or of religion in children under eight 
or ten years, as I presume the author would 
have his readers understand. 

But while I have met during life with so 
little of teaching and inculcation of early piety, 
I have met with no little of metaphysical con- 
troversy, even to surfeiting, on such technical 
questions touching the moral state of new-born 
infants as this: whether "born in sin," or 
"born corrupt," or "born under the wrath of 
God," is the most orthodox expression to de- 
note the exact attitude of Christ toward such 
children at their birth. The mere metaphysi- 
cal philosophy of this relation may, or may 
not, be of some practical use in the Church — 
I will not undertake to determine. I think it 
lies rather beyond the domain of pastoral the- 
ology. And whether the exact rules of defini- 
tion, as used by biblical and Eastern theolo- 
gians, can at this day be precisely determined, 
may, or may not, be more or less useful. I 
leave that and similar theories to others. My 
undertaking is discharged with practical ex- 
planations of children's religious duty and 
high-born franchises under the Christian sys- 
tem. 



Childhood Natueal and Noemal. 109 



CHAPTEE XVI. 

CHILDHOOD IS NATUEAL AND NOEMAL. 

CHILDHOOD being natural, normal, and 
proper, and the grace of Christ being ex- 
actly and equally adapted to all men of all 
ages, it is as well suited to children even back 
to the day of birth — or before, I suppose — as 
to persons of any other age. 

Many persons seem to have the idea that 
children are not susceptible of personal Chris- 
tianity until they arrive at such age as to en- 
able them to comprehend to some considera- 
ble extent the philosophical system of vicarious 
atonement for sin, and the mode and manner 
of its application, etc. This is generally im- 
practicable even in somewhat precocious chil- 
dren before about the age of eight or ten years. 
Generally, it is impracticable before fourteen 
or fifteen. This will leave children under 
these ages and over one or two years in a 
very abnormal condition. They are in this 
period fully capable of moral and immoral 
conduct — subjects of moral government — 
and so they ought to be religious; and yet 



110 Christian Cradlehood. 

practically, if not theoretically, they are gen- 
erally left out of the pale of experimental 
Christianity. 

Here let it be repeated and insisted, that 
any person of any age — one year or forty — who 
is capable of doing wrong, is capable of doing 
right. Capability of violating a law necessa- 
rily implies capability of keeping it. Ability 
to sin implies ability to be religious — not to 
be partially religious, but to be wholly so. It 
is not wrong, nor sinful, nor punishable, to be 
born into and live in this world, notwithstand- 
ing all we have inherited from Adam or from 
anybody else. Nothing is punishable but 
known, willful transgression, unatoned for and 
unrepented of. 

But there is a constitutional disparity be- 
tween childhood and manhood which must be, 
and therefore is, taken account of in all the 
Divine administration toward men. Children, 
as compared with adult persons, are thought- 
less, careless, improvident, forgetful, negli- 
gent, without forecast, and devoid of sound 
judgment; and along with these are also 
playfulness, imbecile talking, lightness, and fri- 
volity, momentary excitements, sudden eleva- 
tions and depressions of spirits, sudden bursts 
of gladness and of sorrows, with impatience, 



Childhood Natural and Normal. Ill 

and a thousand kinds of seeming irregularity 
of life and conduct. 

These things, being natural and constitu- 
tional, are not sinful. Why children are made 
devoid of the sobrieties of age we may not 
know; w T e only see it is so. But being so, and 
that being a part of the constitution of nature, 
the constitution of grace adapts itself to the 
system, and so embraces childhood with all its 
peculiarities, as well as manhood with its so- 
berer and more sedate ones. And so the gos- 
pel is as well adapted to childhood as to man- 
hood. 

Hence it follows that the letter of the law 
of the gospel is seemingly violated, or non- 
observed, a thousand times by children, when 
its spirit and meaning, as applied to them, are 
not in the least infringed. A child knows, and 
can know, but little of scriptural or philosoph- 
ical rules. I insist that Christianity is as well 
adapted to childhood, even from the womb, 
with all its frivolities and thoughtlessness, as 
to any other age or class of persons. 

Children die; they die at all ages, from one 
day to twenty years; and, in my judgment, it 
would be a very defective system of religion 
that would ignore their circumstances and con- 
dition. The Author of children is the Author 



112 Christian Cradlehood. 

of religion; therefore let religion from the 
first be the rule of life — the common Chris- 
tian understanding — and not religion from the 
years of sixteen or twenty. 

On this point Archbishop Whately has some 
good remarks: 

"Whenever a child is capable — which is 
generally at a very early age — of comprehend- 
ing what prayer is, there must be some mode 
of expressing a prayer which will be intelli- 
gible to him: let this expression be adopted; 
let him employ the form which he can best 
understand, and which may be subsequently 
modified and enlarged as his understanding 
advances. No doubt a prayer thus adapted 
to the capacity of a child must be childish: 
how can any natural, fervent, hearty devotions 
of a child be otherwise than childish? Is it 
any disparagement to the devotions of grown 
men that they are human, and not angelic ? 

"Men who are philosophically religious 
without devotion or godliness are generally 
very fearful of the introduction of superstition 
into devotional thoughts and exercise. Relig- 
ion, with them, to be valuable or genuine, must 
be intelligent, erudite, cultured, and philo- 
sophical. 

" This is, itself, the worst and most damag- 



Childhood Natural and Normal. 113 

ing form of religious superstition. By such a 
rule, rigidly enforced, it might not be very 
easy to graduate into Christianity. While 
superstition, in a dangerous or damaging form, 
should be eradicated, as far as practicable, in 
persons of mature understanding or somewhat 
intelligent, in children and ignorant people 
superstition is not only not disadvantageous, 
it is indispensable." 



114 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE HIGH PARENTAL RELATION. 

THERE is a high sacredness, and at least a 
quasi divinity, in the parental relation, 
which is seldom appreciated by fathers and 
mothers. A child enters a new world. His 
mode of existence is thoroughly and radically 
changed. Of his infantile thoughts we know 
but little; they are probably few, and ration- 
ally nearly unreasoning. He is a worshiper 
from the first. Like other people, he has 
learned as much of God and Nature, and of 
men and things, as his observations and teach- 
ings admit of. He looks for a deity, and finds 
it first in his mother, and then his father. His 
nurse and other attendants, however kind and 
attentive to his wants, never rise higher than 
ministers of mercy. His parents are his god, 
and he soon distinguishes them as such above 
all others. In the possible absence of the 
father he worships his mother. He recognizes 
their unlimited authority and their actions as 
the infallible rule of right. They are divine, 
and he is human. 



The High Pakental Belation. 115 

And tlie God of heaven recognizes and sanc- 
tions this relation, for he made it, and upholds 
it — that is, the child's understanding and ap- 
preciation of the relation. This, therefore, is 
good and true religion in its application to all 
persons in that early period of life. Never- 
theless, God himself looks on parents in the 
truer light of legates, or vicegerents, of the Al- 
mighty. While they are ministers, or priests, 
of God to the child, standing in the place of 
God, they are for the child, or in his eyes, the 
Most High himself. 

This is the relation. How long does it con- 
tinue ? And how, and why, and when, does it 
change, and God himself, in Christ, appear 
before the eyes of the child? 

This state of things, where the parent stands 
before the child as the deity, because the in- 
tellect of the child is not capable of looking 
beyond to a truer and more proper deity, con- 
tinues during the period of absolute nonage, 
as herein before described — that is, during the 
period of the child's incapability of discern- 
ing between right and wrong; and as he be- 
gins to learn of a higher and diviner power 
and authority over him, he gradually and 
almost imperceptibly transfers his supreme 
allegiance to the God of heaven through 



116 Christian Cradlehood. 

Christ. But he still holds his parents in this 
office of priesthood, or vicegerency, its potency 
lessening and lessening until near mature man- 
hood. 

Now, if any man thinks that this is not, or 
may not be, a correct statement of the case, let 
him know that there is but one other consid- 
eration conceivable or possible, and that is 
that the office of the parent is to bring the 
child into the world, and supply his physical 
wants, like any other animal mother, until the 
child is capable of supplying them for himself. 
The latter proposition supposes the child to 
be a mere animal; the former regards him 
as a being capable of communion with God. 
There is no middle ground. 

Then, if parents would open their eyes in 
sober reflection upon their true relation to 
their children, they will feel a much greater 
weight of responsibility than most of us do. 
It is no light matter to stand before immortal 
beings in the soft, wax-like formative period 
of their lives, in the character of almost God- 
hood — to go in and out, and mix and mingle 
with them in all the ten thousand details of 
practical every-day life, and be regarded and 
looked up to by them as a saviour, an exem- 
plar, a model of earthly and heavenly perfec- 



The High Parental Belation. 117 

tion. The parent has almost, and in the proper 
and just estimation o£ the child has quite, the 
functions and prerogatives of the Deity. 

I once saw a father walking a few steps in a 
light snow, leaving his foot-prints very plain, 
and his little boy of eight years behind him, 
stretching his tiny legs to place his little feet 
exactly where his father stepped. Ah, thinks 
I to the father, how have those tracks been 
made in the eight years last past! And how 
are you going to measure them in the ten or 
twelve years next to come? That drunken, 
worthless man, these convicts, this young, self- 
important spendthrift of puffed-up Lilliputian 
dimensions — and all these are what they are 
because they could, and therefore did, stretch 
their little legs to step where their fathers 
stepped. 

And that woman of ungovernable temper, of 
mischief-making tongue, of dancing, frolick- 
ing proclivities,, or worse ones, whose head, 
where brains ought to be, is filled with pictures 
of the latest fashions — and all these are what 
they are because their mothers measured, in 
silken, embroidered slippers, it may have been, 
or in plain or rustic shoes, those or similar 
steps before them. It often seems to me that 
many — nay, most— parents, in their high of- 



118 Christian Cradlehood. 

fices of fatherhood and motherhood, are almost 
fools on the face of the earth! 

This high relation of parent and child is not 
merely nominal. Its responsibilities and ob- 
ligations are direct, personal, and weighty. 
Delinquency here is more delinquent and 
blameworthy than in any other affairs of life. 
To defraud a neighbor of a hundred dollars in 
a contract is bad enough, but hot one-tenth so 
bad as to set a bad example before your child. 
The neighbor can perhaps recover; he can 
make another hundred — the child cannot; his 
loss, increasing as it goes, follows him to the 
grave. Defalcation in a business matter is 
bad enough, but failure in performance here is 
far worse. 

A child held to slack-twisted accountability 
in the nursery is a slack-twisted man or woman 
through life. This world has no means of 
supplying the loss. A child unaccustomed to 
family worship is the loser thereby all the 
days of his life. This world has no means of 
fully supplying the loss. Almost every act of 
yours, and almost every neglect, tends to plant 
a permanent item in the character of your 
children. In their eyes you are immaculate, 
and your conduct the standard of uprightness. 

And it is also true that, while the conduct 



The High Parental Belation. 119 

and belief of the parent exercises so great an 
influence over the child, the reciprocal relation- 
ships of life are in full yigor and activity, 
giving the child a silent but powerful in- 
fluence over the parent. There is something 
inexpressibly wonderful in the power of relig- 
ion seen- and acted in others. Argument is 
combative, and excites and challenges opposi- 
tion. Sympathy disarms and captivates. 

There is a vast amount of natural life and 
practical truth in the old story of the conver- 
sion of the infidel. There have been thou- 
sands such. The preacher was very glad, in- 
deed — always had great confidence in the 
power of gospel truth and reasoning. How 
successfully Paul reasoned with Felix! He 
(the preacher) had, he would confess, made 
special effort in a number of recent sermons 
to direct the mind of his converted friend 
rightly, and now would be glad to know which 
of these arguments had so happily reached 
him. 

"O," said the convert, "my dear sir, you are 
mistaken. I had always a ready argument for 
your reasoning. But did you notice those two 
little girls converted at the altar last night, 
and their simple, natural conduct under the 
effect of it? That w^as it. I had no argument 



120 Cheistian Ceadlehood. 

to meet that. This scene did not challenge 
my logic. It came up on the defenseless 
side." 

There is more skepticism, practical and log- 
ical, among us than many of us are aware of. 
The eloquence and the logic of the doctors 
have both failed. Now send a religious child 
— the younger the better, generally. He ap- 
proaches "on the defenseless side." 

Another point of most vital and momentous 
importance in the culture of children is set 
forth in Proverbs xxii. 6, a scripture very fre- 
quently alluded to and descanted upon in the 
pulpit and elsewhere, but by no means always 
well understood: "Train up a child in the way 
he should go, and when he is old he will not 
depart from it." The word train, as we read 
it in our language, or train up, we are told by 
the biblical critics, while it will bear the mean- 
ing of teaching, persuasion, admonition, etc., 
administered directly to the child, its primary 
meaning in the original language is to ded- 
icate, or consecrate. Dr. Clarke, expounding 
this text, paraphrases it, "Dedicate, therefore, 
in the first instance, your child to God, and 
nurse, teach, and discipline him as God's child, 
whom he has intrusted to your care." This 
same word translated train is elsewhere ren- 



The High Parental Belation. 121 

dered dedicate. See Deut. xx. 5; 1 Kings viii. 
63, and several other places. 

This seems most strikingly simple, devo- 
tional, natural, and proper. The relation of 
parent and child is very close. In very young 
children they almost coinhere in a single indi- 
viduality. Their severalty is an after-growth. 
Judah, in his appeal to Joseph, said that Ja- 
cob's "life was bound up in the lad's life." 
The parent and child are bone of each other's 
bone, and flesh of each other's flesh. How 
can a parent fail to dedicate the child to God? 
How can parents be in Christ, and their chil- 
dren remain out of Christ? By all means let 
the children be dedicated. The baptismal 
dedication is a Church affair; the parental 
dedication is household consecration. 



122 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 

ELIGIBILITY TO CHURCH-MEMBERSHIP. 

IN the many treatises afloat on the rearing 
and government of children, it seems to be 
an open question when the proper time is to 
begin to cultivate in them religion proper. 
All agree that from a very early period, so 
soon' as they are fully capable of distinguish- 
ing between right and wrong conduct, they 
should be taught good behavior, good morals, 
and the general notion is that this is an excel- 
lent mode of preparing them to become relig- 
ious at the proper future time. But when is 
the proper time for them to take on, embrace, 
profess, and enjoy religion? 

Moral conduct, in children or grown people, 
relates to our fellow-creatures; religion goes 
higher, and relates to God. Now, the question 
seems to be, When, or about what period, is a 
child fitted for this higher relation in its am- 
plest forms and highest state ? 

This is not precisely the question of early 
Church-membership, about which so much is 
written of late, though it is very nearly akin 



Eligibility to Church-membership. 123 

to it. It is an absurdity to suppose a person 
irreligious and honestly in the Church of 
Christ; and it is another absurdity to prohibit, 
or prevent, a person — any person — from be- 
coming a member of the Church until he is 
able to explain and express himself regene- 
rated, or born again, born of the Spirit — or, as 
many express it, converted— or to know and 
feel an experience of God's love in his heart, 
and capable of being explained to the satisfac- 
tion of some other person. 

Most Baptists do not evidently consider a 
child or youth capable of religion at all until 
he shall arrive at such a state of theological 
knowledge and biblical criticism as to be able 
to understand at least the fundamental princi- 
ples of ecclesiastical science, the principles 
and modes of forming Church-membership, of 
ministerial authority, and the Christian sac- 
raments. They do not allow him to enter the 
Church until he understands these subjects as 
they understand them. Previous to this at- 
tainment, he is prepared by moral training for 
religion and Church-membership at what they 
call a proper time in the future. 

The provision of my Church on this subject 
— that is, of children's Church-membership — 
is as follows: 



124 Cheistian Cradlehood. 

"As soon as they [the children] comprehend 
the responsibilities involved in a public pro- 
fession of faith in Christ, and give evidence of 
a sincere and earnest determination to dis- 
charge the same, see that they be recognized 
as members of the Church agreeably to the 
provisions of the Discipline." 

This direction to pastors must be looked 
into a little. On page 216 of Discipline, edi- 
tion of 1875, it is well stated that "All, of every 
age and station, stand in need of the means of 
grace which it [the Church] alone supplies." 
Means of grace, helps to a Christian life, are 
not to be looked for out of the Church, but in 
it. This applies to "all, of every age." "And 
it invites all alike to become fellow- citizens 
with the saints and of the household of God." 
This invitation as to small children is, of 
course, made through the parents. But their 
practical membership in the Church is clearly 
recognized, for it is in, and not out of, the 
Church that they are to find the means of 
grace. 

" But as none who have arrived at the years 
of discretion can remain within its pales, or be 
admitted to its communion, without assuming 
its obligations, it is my duty to demand," etc. 

I am unable to see the strict propriety of 



Eligibility to Church-membership. 125 

the use of the word assuming in the foregoing 
extract. Acknowledging is, I suppose, what is 
meant. We do not assume moral and relig- 
ious obligations. They are placed upon us, 
with all possible force, by imperial authority, 
without any consent or assumption on our 
part. Now, we may, as many do, disregard this 
obligation, and take the consequences, but that 
does not lessen the obligation; or, we may rec- 
ognize or acknowledge it, and promise to fulfill 
it, but that does neither create nor increase it. 
Therefore, as the Church can have no obli- 
gations except moral and religious ones, let us 
construe the law to mean that we are to ac- 
knowledge its obligations. This, and then to ful- 
fill them, is all we can dp. The pious, well-in- 
structed child has, of course, been doing these 
two things every day and all the while. It is 
in these two things that his piety, or obedience, 
consists. He may, or may not, be able to look 
back to the period, or about the period, when 
by divine grace and personal determination he 
first entered upon this religious life. That is 
quite unimportant, and would depend mainly 
upon whether the period would carry his 
memory far enough back into the dim twi- 
light of childish or infantile experience — a 
mere historic fact lying upon the surface of 



126 Christian Cradlehood. 

life. If he have the experience now, then he 
has it. 

Like older Christians, his religious obliga- 
tions do by no means rest upon any mere ver- 
bal promises he may have made at any partic- 
ular time, but rather in a felt consciousness of 
the rightful authority of God over him. His 
acknowledgment of God's right to govern 
him, and that he must obey, and delights to 
obey, has had a hundred-fold more expression 
in his every-day life and constant pious walk 
and conduct than it could have in any mere 
verbal promises. 

So here is a class of children which seem 
to me not well provided for in the above ar- 
rangement. Let us explain: 

George and Robert are of the same age — say 
eight, or nine, or fifteen. They were baptized 
at the same time — in early infancy — and shall 
here represent two classes of children. George, 
from his earliest recollection, has been taught to 
consider himself a member of the Church. His 
baptism and the obligations of Church-mem- 
bership have all along been fully explained 
to him. He knows full well that Robert, 
and all children of such character and con- 
duct, are not in the Church, though baptized. 
He sees they are not religious. From about 



Eligibility to Church-membership. 127 

three years old George has given constant and 
satisfactory evidence of piety, and is always 
glad he is in the Church, frequently express- 
ing regret that others are not. His pious life 
is well known to pastor, parents, and others. 
His general conduct — considering always that 
he is a child, and not a man — will compare fa- 
vorably with the average Church-member. 

Robert has lived differently. Notoriously 
out of the Church — never pretended to con- 
form to its rules, or meet its obligations. His 
baptism was laid aside — practically repudi- 
ated. At the age of ten or fifteen he becomes 
serious, repents, reforms, and joins the Church 
for the first time. 

His case is well met by the above provis- 
ions of discipline. But how about George? 
For him to stand before the Church in a class 
of persons just now stepping into religion for 
the first time, and joining the Church for the 
first time, and promising for the first time to 
keep the rules of the Church, and abstain from 
wicked conduct — for George to do this would 
be a contradiction and a falsification of what 
he and everybody else knows to be true. He 
promises, as a primary undertaking, that which 
is by no means a new undertaking as it is with 
Kobert and the others, but the very things he 



128 Christian Cradlehood. 

knows he has been doing from his very earliest 
recollection. How can he join the Church, 
and at this late day — be it at eight years or 
eighteen, or any other age — promise, as for 
the first time, to do what he does not remem- 
ber ever to have failed to do? 

George has been for weeks and months try- 
ing to exhort and persuade his friend Robert 
to join the Church, and be religious, and had 
frequently prayed that God would give him a 
new heart, and make him a good boy; and now 
that he has succeeded, he is told that he him- 
self has all the while past been in the same 
category with Robert, and must, like him, 
commence a religious life anew, join the 
Church anew, and begin anew to be religious. 
This would be as clearly unjust as it is palpa- 
bly impossible. 

I am unable to see a reason why George — ■ 
I mean children, girls or boys of that class — 
should be required, in the coarse of a well-rec- 
ognized religious life 7 to assume the obligations 
of the Church verbally and categorically any 
more than any or all the older members. 

Now, it so happens that in my own case per- 
sonally I never was received into full connec- 
tion in the Church. And have I not, there- 
fore, acknowledged the obligations of the 



Eligibility to Church-membership. 129 

Church? .{Acknowledge is a better word here 
than "assume.") Rather, is it not well known 
that I have done this every day of my life for 
a half -century past, however much I may have 
failed in fulfilling these obligations ? Would 
a thousand verbal promises strengthen the ac- 
knowledgment? Would a verbal promise and 
undertaking to be honest strengthen the obli- 
gation among honest men? Nevertheless, I 
see very plainly in case of a man confessedly 
dishonest heretofore, and desiring association 
with honest men, why he should walk squarely 
up to the altar of justice and promise and un- 
dertake. 

It may be said that the pastor ought long 
ago to have "recognized" George as a mem- 
ber of the Church according to the Discipline 
— that he should have done this as early as the 
child recognized himself as a member, and 
actually conformed to the rules. But this was 
a clear impossibility. At that time it was im- 
possible for George, or any intelligent, well- 
instructed child, to respond intelligibly and 
in good faith to the questions propounded in 
the Book of Discipline. The language of the 
Discipline is far beyond his years and under- 
standing. Of many of the terms employed a 
child of three to five years can have no clear un- 
9 



130 Christian Cradlehood. 

derstanding. Under favorable circumstances 
this would require the learning of twelve or 
fifteen years. Simple as this language is to 
men of information, it sometimes requires 
mature years, or nearly so, to comprehend it 
all fully. 

There is this, however, that might be done, 
but it would not be perhaps quite " according 
to the Discipline": The pastor could talk with 
a pious child of three, or five, or six years, and 
in simple child's language ascertain if such 
were really the case that the child knew that 
Jesus died for him and for all good people — 
that he was glad it was so — that he intended to 
be good, and do every thing the Saviour wanted 
him to do — to mind papa and mamma — that he 
intended to say his prayers every time, and 
learn his lessons, and that he wanted to be in 
the Church. This is reasonable, natural, prac- 
ticable, and philosophical. It meets the case 
before us fully. But you require him to an- 
swer promptly and categorically that he will 
renounce the devil and all his works. He can- 
not do it. He does not know what renounce 
means; he never heard the word before. He 
does not know that the devil has any ivorks by 
that name; he never saw them, and does not 
know how they look. He does not know that 



Eligibility to Church-membership. 131 

the world has any vain pomp ; or glory. He has 
often heard the word glory, but always sup- 
posed it meant something wonderfully good, 
or heavenly. "Vain pomp" the child knows 
nothing about — never heard the words before 
— does not know whether it is good or bad, or 
how it would look if he should see it. He 
knows what it is to be good, but never heard 
of "ratify" before. 

Indeed, these entire questions, propounded 
to a pious child, might as well be written and 
read in Arabic, Hebrew, or Choctaw. A little 
boy or girl of five years does not comprehend 
an idea in them. Nobody ever could suppose 
that they were either calculated, or intended, 
for small children. They are exclusively for 
grown people, or very intelligent persons 
nearly grown. Here it might be said, Let the 
parent, or pastor, teach the child beforehand 
the meaning of these terms. But this is the 
very thing that is impossible. A smart, well- 
instructed child of eight or ten might, perhaps, 
be taught the mere literal meaning of the 
words, but his acquaintance with the world 
and its general sinful character is very far in- 
sufficient for him to comprehend their practi- 
cal import. So I am not certain that our Dis- 
cipline in this particular place "recognizes" 



132 Christian Cradlehood. 

that entire class of Christians represented by 
George, though it provides well for Robert and 
his class. 

I hope nobody will intimate that this class 
is too small to be particularly provided for. 
That would be disgraceful. This class of pious 
Christian boys and girls certainly ought to be 
one of the largest, most promising, and inter- 
esting, in the Church. Let parents and pastors 
do their duty, or even some goodly portion of 
it, and this can never fail to be the case. 

So may it not be well that we strongly rec- 
ommend and encourage the full and proper 
Church-membership of pious children on the 
ground of their piety and well-lived and unre- 
pudiated baptism, irrespective of such literary 
knowledge and intellectual attainment as would 
enable them to give intelligible answers to all 
these legal and technical phrases of the Disci- 
pline? These questions are well put where 
they are applicable; but what about the few 
cases that are, and the millions that ought to 
be, where they are not applicable? 

"Why not look for and work for high Chris- 
tianity among the babes and sucklings of three, 
or five, or six years, or younger still, where the 
Saviour said it was and ought to be ? Might 
not a few additional words along here in the 



Eligibility to Church-membership. 133 

Discipline make better provision for young, 
pious children? 

The Discipline, as it now is, is not appli- 
cable to pious, religiously - reared children. 
It does not seem to suppose there are any 
such; and may be this is one reason why there 
are so few. The Discipline provides for the 
return of such children as have gone astray, 
and kept astray, in outward wickedness for ten 
or twenty years or more. They can return, as 
a very few do, and acknowledge their baptis- 
mal vow. But where is the provision, rational 
and apparent to the child himself, for piously- 
reared children — those brought up in the nurt- 
ure and admonition of the Lord ? 



134 Ch-kistian Ceadlehood. 



CHAPTEE XIX. 

WHAT IS THE AGE OF KELIGIOUS CAPABILITY ? 

THE constitution of human nature forbids 
a categorical answer to this question, and 
yet we can state some things, axiomatic and 
otherwise, which will go far toward an elucida- 
tion of it. 

1. It is an axiom that cannot be questioned, 
or too often repeated, that any person, young 
or old, who is capable of doing wrong, is capa- 
ble of doing right. The one necessarily im- 
plies the other. Religion is doing right — irre- 
ligion is doing wrong. Sin is the transgression 
of the law — conscious transgression. It is the 
same, therefore, to inquire how early in life is 
a child capable of doing wrong — any thing 
wrong — as to inquire how early he is eligible 
to Christianity. The two periods are necessa- 
rily one and the same period. 

2. No specific, namable amount of religious, 
theological, or ecclesiastical information, or at- 
tainment in knowledge, is necessary to -the full- 
est and highest enjoyment of religious peace, 
love, and obedience, in all circumstances of life. 



The Age of Eeligious Capability. 135 

3. We generally ascertain the inward state 
of persons by what they say or profess; but 
we cannot do this with small children. Chil- 
dren know far beyond what they are able to 
tell. They have neither the mechanical nor 
literary use of language, nor the practice of ar- 
ranging words to tell their feelings or thoughts. 
They have ideas, as clear and distinct as they 
ever can have, several years ahead of their 
ability to describe them orally. We do the 
child, therefore, great injustice — we are liable 
to do it — when we subject him to such an ex- 
amination about his religion as we would an 
older person. Our technical phrases are all 
Greek to him. Ask him about God's love in 
his heart: he does not know that he has a 
heart, only as he knows that he has a liver. 
Ask him if God for Christ's sake has forgiven 
his sins; and he does not know what Christ's 
sake is. Tou must ascertain his religious state 
by other means than a dictionary and a gram- 
mar. We do not depend upon mere language 
and literary examinations in getting into the 
feelings of a child in other matters, and why 
should we in religion? The child has learned 
the meaning of but very few words, and they 
are nursery- words. He knows the use of food 
as well as the wisest, but he does not know the 



136 Cheistian Cradlehood. 

use of a stomach, or that there is such a thing 
as digestion. He knows that God is all about 
the house, and can see him all the time, and 
will take him to heaven, and that heaven is 
just above the tops of the trees. A very smart 
and eminently pious child supposed the stars 
were holes in the sky through which God 
looked down upon us all. Astronomy might 
find some fault with that idea, but religion 
could not. 

A physician called to see a sick child would 
be regarded as deficient who would turn away 
because the patient could not answer questions 
clearly that would form the structure for a 
diagnosis. And yet he has the same means, 
and better, of discovering the physical state 
of the child that the minister has of ascer- 
taining the spiritual state. The direct literary 
use of words is of but little value in either 
case. In case of the physician, I can see the 
need for ascertaining exactly the inward state; 
and in case of the minister, I can see a general 
usefulness in his being acquainted as well as 
may be with all his peop]e; but I am unable to 
see, and certainly I have never seen stated, any 
necessity for an exact spiritual diagnosis in 
order to determine whether the child might or 
might not be received into the Church. I 



The Age of Religious Capability. 137 

don't know what practical use the minister 
would make of the information if he could 
get it. The child is rightly in the Church, 
whatever may be. his age — in the absence of 
persistent wickedness, or determined repu- 
diation of Christianity, which is, I suppose, 
about the same thing. 

In the Church is a better place to cure and 
improve his bad conduct than out of it. That 
he is a proper candidate for the highest Chris- 
tianity is not to be questioned. The Bible, as 
well as the early Church, is full of children's 
religion everywhere from Genesis to Revela- 
tion, and from Abel to Jt>hn. It is staple in 
the practice of the prophets, and fresh in the 
teachings of Jesus. The child's place is in the 
Church. Religion out of the Church is not 
only an error, it is more; it is an absurdity, 
because it is a contradiction. If a child behav© 
badly in the Church, teach him better. En- 
courage and admonish him. He cannot be 
considered incorrigible. That can be sup- 
posed only of grown people, or those nearly 
adult. Proper treatment will plant solid, fruit- 
ful Christianity in the heart and life of any 
child. The wickedness of the world, be it 
much or little, is the fruit of bad early train- 
ing. 



138 Christian Cradlehood. 

At the time of the writing and insertion of 
this particular paragraph I chance to be in 
Washington City, and have attended some of 
the revival-meetings of a noted evangelist, in 
which has been produced a very great work of 
grace among children, mostly from about five 
or six years and upward. At one of these 
children's meetings, there being perhaps twen- 
ty ministers on the platform, a Presbyterian 
clergyman of more than three-score years, 
from Philadelphia, I believe, in a short ad- 
dress, in congratulating the Churches on this 
gracious work among the children, remarked 
about as follows: "Now since it is but a very 
short time [perhaps he said a year or two] 
since we first regarded it possible for children 
to be religious, what may we not look for in 
the future, seeing that so many are brought to 
Christ here in these few days?" I was sur- 
prised at the declaration, and hoped that some 
of us might be excused from that category. 
And yet, practically, will not this strange blun- 
der have a fearfully wide application? 

This minister seemed to labor under the 
strange idea — popular as it may be — that chil- 
dren, or youths, rather, must know so much, 
must attain to such and such degrees of the- 
ological learning, before they can possess the 



The Age of Beligious Capability. 139 

grace of everlasting life; whereas the rule is, 
"He that believeth hath everlasting life." 
How old must a child be in order to believe what 
you tell him? Who will say a smart child of 
two or three years may not believe as well as 
one of twenty? When intellectually capable 
of believing, he is required to believe, we may 
well suppose; before that time, he is saved 
without it. 

But how much God requires of small chil- 
dren is a question that must be referred to each 
particular one. Like older persons, they are 
accountable according to several ability. But 
if my child were to die at four or six years of 
age, when all the sermons and obituaries say 
he is safe, I would much prefer that he be 
practically and intelligibly pious than ignorant 
of God and Christ. 



140 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTEE XX. 

EARLY IDEAS OE RELIGION. 

THE great cardinal and fundamental ideas 
of religion are as clear, distinct, well 
formed, and true in well-taught children of 
three or five years as in doctors of theology of 
three-score and ten. Religion has very few 
necessary ideas; and children have but very 
few ideas. A child of two or three years, or 
more, has just two ideas about religion and 
morals. They are fundamental, and really 
they comprehend all the ideas I know any 
thing about on those subjects. A child com- 
prehends perfectly well what it is to be good 
and to be bad. These two things he under- 
stands perfectly well. It is right to do right; 
it is wrong to do wrong. He ought to do right ; 
he must not do wrong. This is his creed; this 
is his religion; this is his system of morals. 

And does any man's morals, any man's re- 
ligion, rise higher or go beyond that? Does 
Christianity require or recommend any thing 
higher or more than that? Certainly not. 
The theologian, or Christian moralist, may 



Early Ideas of Keligion. 141 

divide and classify these fundamental princi- 
ples, and teach separate parts severally and 
separately, while the child cannot; but human 
ingenuity cannot, and revelation does not, go 
beyond the simplest child's creed — to be good, 
and be bad. There is the acme of human per- 
fectibility assisted and accompanied by all the 
grace known to human salvation; and there is 
all the depth of ruin and damnation known to 
the curses of Scripture revelation. The man 
who lives beneath the sun, of any age between 
the womb and the grave, in any conditions and 
circumstances of life, who does right, is a Chris- 
tian of the highest type. Did divine grace 
ever assist to do more? 

But it may be said that Christianity implies 
divine grace in the heart, the transforming 
work of the Holy Ghost, in addition to the 
doing of the man. Of course it does; that is 
to say, doing right implies two things: first, 
the utmost of human effort; and secondly, the 
inward work of the Holy Ghost. There can 
be no doing right without both these things. 
If man could do right — fulfill the measure of 
divine requirement — without the assisting 
grace of God in Christ, then I see no necessity 
for Christian atonement. It might be useful, 
but could not be necessary. The person, old 



142 Christian Cradlehood. 

or young — surely it matters not what age — 
who does right, or, in the child's language, is 
"good," not only has, but feels, the grace of 
God moving him to such conduct. But the 
feebleness and inaccuracy of language are such, 
even in grown people, when employed to de- 
scribe spiritual things, that in the attempt one 
will use these words, and another those— very 
feeble at best, and quite unsatisfactory to both 
speaker and hearer. And in case of a child 
who cannot even describe a horse by his gen- 
eral color, how can you expect him to describe 
an inward, spiritual emotion? 

Let the universally admitted doctrine be 
stated here that we cannot speak a good word, 
think a good thought, nor do a good deed, with- 
out the grace of God assisting us ; and then let 
us be reminded that sin is as deep, universal, 
and pervading, as it is generally believed to be 
by the best and most intelligent Christians; 
and then we may see the more clearly that all 
good and right among men is of grace. But 
will you deny a child a year old a participa- 
tion in this forgiving, converting, transform- 
ing, saving faith and grace, because he is un- 
able to describe it according to your most 
approved classical formulas? 

A child can feel, and appreciate, and deplore 



Early Ideas of Eeligion. 143 

—yea, and can commune with God — as accu- 
rately as his father or his pastor, but he has 
no words with which to express his emotion. 
The notion that a Christian must be able to ex- 
• press, in approved and acceptable phraseology, 
his conversion — the time, place, and circum- 
stances of its occurrence — so that other men 
may judge of its genuineness, may have appli- 
cation, and does have application, to some per- 
sons of considerable open experience in out- 
ward sinful life; but to apply it to a child of 
tender years would be to turn the constitution 
of nature out-of-doors in all its application to 
infantile life. 

A child under five or six years cannot tell 
you much about his religion, because of me- 
chanical and literary reasons — yea, and be- 
cause of intellectual reasons — but he may have 
religion, the best and of the highest type known 
to grace and experience. And I suppose it is 
because of the sublime purity and high evan- 
gelical character of the religion of "little chil- 
dren" — as it may be, and therefore ought to 
be — that it is so highly recommended to grown 
people by the Saviour. 

What religion did the Saviour esteem most 
and recommend highest? Not the religion of 
theology, nor of Church-science— -not the re- 



141 Christian Cradlehood. 

ligion of doctrines, nor of history, nor of lit- 
erature ; but the religion of little children. 

Outward actions are not religion, properly 
or legally speaking; they are rather the evi- 
dences, or manifestations, of the existence of 
religion. Intelligent adult persons can give 
information, as in other matters of feeling and 
inward impression, by words and comparisons ; 
children cannot. Moreover, with children, as 
with all uninformed persons, much more im- 
portance is attached to outward forms than 
with grown-up, intelligent persons. A child 
attaches great solemnity and importance to 
forms, and attitude, and posture, in prayer and 
other religious exercises. Set times and forms 
and exactness in devotion make a great im- 
pression on the infantile mind. These should 
be encouraged; they make impressions which, 
if cultivated and kept alive, will tend largely 
to the building and establishment of a sound 
religious character, and to blunt the edge and 
weaken the force of many temptations in ma- 
turer life. 

The more didactic teaching of abstract prin- 
ciples, to be interwoven into practical life, is 
useful for persons accustomed to thought and 
reflection, but not for children who are almost 
thoughtless. In them you must inculcate 



Eaely Ideas of Eeligion. 145 

thoughts more by words and outward actions. 
Forms, and attitudes, and examples, impress 
children. Bible incidents of early piety, and 
other incidents, stimulate emulation. They 
are far more easily impressed by constant 
repetition of simple nursery prayers, Bible 
verses, and Scripture facts, than by didactic 
religious instruction. Modes of teaching must 
be brought down to a child's capacity. You 
cannot talk intelligibly to young children about 
conversion, and God's grace, humility, and the 
like. Their sphere of intellectual knowledge 
is small. Children are as child-like in matters 
of religion as in matters of property, civil gov- 
ernment, jurisprudence, and other branches of 
philosophy. 

A child's worship consists in acts, and not 
much in sentiment and pleasurable emotion. 
He will go to the altar to be prayed for if you 
tell him, and if he sees others do so, and will 
feel a degree of satisfaction in doing so, as he 
would in saying his evening prayer without 
missing many of the words; but it is nat- 
urally impossible that he can feel the humil- 
iation, the resignation, the heavy sense of guilt 
and forgiveness, of an old and intelligent sin- 
ner. You may say his condition in the sight 
of God as an unregenerate sinner is the same. 
10 



146 Christian Cradlehood. 

This is true only in a strictly legal sense; 
practically it is not. God regards him as a 
child-sinner with but very little sinful life and 
experience, while he looks upon the other as 
an old, experienced veteran in transgression. 
Nor can a child regard himself as what he is 
not. He is not conscious of a life of defiant 
■wickedness and rebellion he has not lived. 

Tell him to give God his heart, to throw 
himself entirely upon the atoning merits of 
Christ, and such like technical and figurative 
language — these words are all Greek to him, 
he understands very little about them; but 
tell him Jesus died to save him, and keep him 
alive, and make him good— that he lives in 
heaven, and loves all good children, and will 
take them to heaven when they die if they be 
good, and that he must be good — this he can 
understand. 

The great practical instrumentality in relig- 
ion is prayer; and surely no prayer rises to a 
higher plane of either natural or divine re- 
quirement than that of a child. Prayer is not 
estimated in heaven by the style of rhetoric, 
the measure of its literature, nor by the choice 
or pronunciation of its words, but by the ear- 
nestness and simplicity of reliance with which 
it is uttered. Then there can be no prayer 



Early Ideas of Religion. 147 

more potent or more effectual than that of a 
child. Rightly taught, he looks to God for 
help with as much direct and immediate con- 
fidence as to his mother. It may be said his 
prayers embody and set forth but very little 
intelligence and solid thought of God and eter- 
nal things. They may be characterized as 
hasty, and flippant, and devoid of much con- 
sideration. Be it so. That is all true. He 
is yet a child, and not a mature man. Not 
only his prayers, but he himself, in every char- 
acteristic he possesses, is of little solid thought 
and intelligence about God, or any thing else. 
He is hasty, flippant, and devoid of much con- 
sideration about any thing. But the impor- 
tant question is, Is not Christianity as well 
adapted to that state of life as to any other? 
In the frame-work of Christianity, so to speak, 
was not the cradle, and the nursery with its 
known flippancy and lack of sober considera- 
tion, fully considered and provided for ? 

Repentance, too, is a vital ingredient in 
Christianity. And it may be said of a child 
that his sorrow for sin is very superficial. Of 
course it is. The child himself is superficial. 
In every aspect you will view him — moral, men- 
tal, social, and physical— he is all superficial. 
Nothing about him has any deep foundation. 



148 Christian Ckadlehood. 

And is he expected to be less natural, less 
himself, in his religion than in his other de- 
velopments ? 

It is children we are talking about — prat- 
tling, inconsiderate, flippant, shallow, and 
thoughtless children. When they become 
men and women, they are likely to put away 
childish things, but not before; and they will 
then put them away not because they are 
wrong, for they are not wrong. They are as 
right and as useful as the most sapient think- 
ing of three-score and ten years. And is not 
Christianity as well and as exactly adapted to 
the young, however young, as to the old, how- 
ever old? Who will question it? It is no 
greater an error, nor no greater an absurdity, 
to suppose some people too old to be religious 
than that some are too young. They are never 
too young. If alive, they are always at the 
right age. 



Is Sin Ever Necessary? 149 



CHAPTEB XXI. 

IS SIN EVER NECESSARY? 

I SUPPOSE every man will say it would be 
both contradictory and absurd to presume 
that sin was, or could ever be, necessary. Well 
then, if we settle that as an inviolable princi- 
ple, and do not forget it as we pass along in 
this review of children's religion, it will give 
us great advancement, and save us a great deal 
of argument. Sin is never necessary. Sin may, 
and should, always be avoided. Whenever an 
act of sin, of whatever grade or character, is 
committed, or by whomsoever committed, it 
must be said the thing ought not to have been 
done; the improper thought ought not to have 
been thought; the wish ought not to have been 
wished; the feeling ought not to have been in- 
dulged; the act ought not to have been done; 
but in the room and stead of the improper 
thought, wish, feeling, or act, religious, pious, 
holy things should and might have been done. 
In other and shorter words, a person — no 
matter about the years or circumstances — any 
human person, capable of doing wrong, is ca- 



150 Cheistian Cradlehood. 

pable of doing right. If capable of sin he is 
capable of religion. It was said back yonder 
that obedience — full and complete obedience 
to rightful authority — was religion in its high- 
est signification, and that all sin was but dis- 
obedience. Now we are told that very young 
children commit sin sometimes. They go 
astray even from the womb. So do men go 
astray from their attainment of majority. So 
they are, of course, at each period capable of 
religion. A child, therefore, capable of doing 
wrong, of disobedience in much or little, is 
then and there capable of the highest type of 
religion; and so is a man, at any age. So we 
have reached an important point. A child so 
soon as he emerges from his early infancy — 
which I have designated his absolute nonage, 
in which he is intellectually incapable of a 
moral action at all — is then and there capable 
of the highest type of Christian perfectibility. 
We reach this conclusion not only by the dem- 
onstrations of logical reasoning, but we have 
Scripture proof and illustration also, and abun- 
dant. 

We read in Scripture that "the wicked are 
estranged from the womb; they go astray as 
soon as they be born, speaking lies." But 
this and any similar declarations do by no 



Is Sin Ever Necessary? 151 

means imply that there is any more likelihood 
or aptitude for sinfulness at or near the earlier 
than the later periods of life. Indeed, the 
reverse is the case, because sin produces 
greater and greater aptitude to sin as it pro- 
gresses. Scripture predicates sinfulness of 
the whole man; no more of early childhood 
than later years. The difference is, the later 
the more difficult its removal. 

So we have settled an important point in 
Christian theology, a matter that has jostled 
the minds of many. Many persons have lived 
and worshiped, and some, it is feared, have 
preached, under the belief that a part of every 
life must be spent in sin. This is very lofty 
Calvinism. The regenerating grace of God 
does not need sinful conduct, much or little, as 
a basis of operation. Cannot grace regenerate 
from a sinful state as well as from a sinful 
life? All are in a sinful state; but some do 
not live long enough to enter into a sinful life. 
If sin can be cured it can be prevented. 

But how far this or that parent could reduce 
these principles to practice, in the present 
state of the Church and the world, and in his 
particular neighborhood, is another question. 
And if one could, under extremely favorable 
conditions, it does not follow that another 



152 Christian Ckadlehood. 

could. Some parents are miserably incompe- 
tent just here. If good training cannot be 
quite reached, it can be partially reached. 
Great improvement is certainly within the 
reach of all; though even this will not be 
reached except by those who reach after it. 

How can "babes and sucklings" render 
proper and profitable praise to God but by 
pious obedience and inward holiness wrought 
by the Holy Ghost? And the Saviour him- 
self said that we must all of us receive the 
kingdom of God "as a little child;" not as a 
man of years, understanding, and erudition, 
but rather as a little child. Go, therefore, to 
a child, a little child — and not to a doctor of 
theology — for example and instruction in the 
higher faith and experience of Christianity. 
Examples of infantile piety are by no means 
wanting in Scripture. 

And when we look at the simple, confiding, 
unhesitating faith of a child, before the sub- 
tilties, sophistries, and ingenious lies and 
practices of maturer years have warped his 
understanding, we see some of the finest spec- 
imens of human faith known to the Christian 
character. A well-taught child has no more 
doubt or hesitation about God's protecting 
care of "good" children, and that he will take 



Is Sin Ever Necessary? 153 

them to heaven when they die, than of his own 
personal being. He believes it with the high- 
est Christian faith. 

Is there any better or higher religion than 
this ? The Bible calls it the highest and best. 
It may be said the child is unacquainted with 
the distinctions and relation of the triunity of 
the Godhead; that he understands very little 
about the time, place, reasons, and character 
of the crucifixion of Christ; and, in short, that 
he is almost wholly unacquainted with the va- 
rious doctrines of Christianity. This is very 
true. Names, history, biography, doctrines, 
biblical literature, etc., pertain to Christian 
theology, to the philosophy of religion; but 
the simple, comprehensive faith of Christian- 
ity — that which brings God and salvation into 
the soul— does not necessarily include any par- 
ticular amount of learning in regard to any or 
all of these things. It does not necessarily 
require more of intellectual learning than what 
relates to being good. 

No person can be a Christian— one year old 
or forty — -without his intellectual knowledge 
being well-seasoned with revealed godliness 
up to, or according to, his capabilities. The 
child of two years or less comes up to this 
requisition, and the theologian of three-score 



154 Christian Cradlehood. 

years, with his diploma, does not rise above it. 
God, either in nature or grace, does not put 
old heads on young shoulders. Christianity 
adapts itself as well and as fully to the child 
whose entire system of morals and religion is 
comprehended in the simple idea of being good 
as to the maturer man. If the latter can an- 
swer promptly the exact difference between 
regeneration and adoption, it is because of his 
superior intellectual culture, and not because 
of his stronger faith in God. No man has 
stronger or better faith than a child. 

I repeat and insist upon, and again repeat, 
the great and self-evident truth that a child, 
however young, capable of doing wrong is ca- 
pable of doing right; if capable of sin, he is 
capable of holiness; if capable of disobedience, 
he is capable of obedience; and if capable of 
being religious, he ought, then and there, to be 
solidly religious. To deny this would be to 
affirm that sin is sometimes necessary. 

I repeat and insist upon this point because 
of its vital importance, and because I see 
around me among parents and pastors such an 
indisposition to recognize religion in children, 
or even to make direct effort to plant it there, 
until they are nine or ten years old or so, and 
until they see and understand enough of the- 



Is Sin Evek Necessaby? 155 

ology to induce them to go to the altar, to be 
prayed for, or perform some such act, and then 
describe their feelings in approved language. 
I would not have religion recognized or fan- 
cied where it is not — -alas that there is so 
little among our children! — but I would have 
right efforts made to plant and inculcate it in 
the early nursery, and then to keep it watered, 
nurtured, and a-growing. 

A very great and important object is se- 
cured, and easily secured — O how easily! — by 
merely training a small child to do something 
habitually, be it ever so trivial, from a sense 
of religious obligation. Such religious ideas 
well and early fixed in the mind, if reasonably 
cultivated, will never leave him. Such acts 
and beliefs may be said to be superstitions. 
Of course, they are superstitions. Early piety 
is necessarily superstitious — that is, it would 
be superstitious in better-informed persons. 
Objectionable superstition can be predicated 
only of persons whose intellect and reasoning 
powers are sufficiently matured and expanded 
to be able to carry on a process of induction, 
and who willfully or negligently fail to do so. 
Superstition, so far from being objectionable 
in childhood-thought, is naturally inherent in 
it. Children think superstitiously about every 



156 Christian Cradlehood. 

thing else, and why attempt to exclude it from 
matters of religion? Without superstition, 
there could be no mental childhood. It be- 
longs necessarily to the early openings of the 
mind, and is laid aside only as the reasoning 
faculties mature. 



The Fickleness of Childhood. 157 



CHAPTEE XXII. 

THE FICKLENESS OF CHILDHOOD. 

THE'differences between children and older 
persons in sobriety, calculating thought- 
fulness, firmness of purpose, and stability of 
character, are well known; but to suppose this 
natural fickleness and instability is any im- 
pediment to a child's religious faith, beyond the 
seductions and temptations common to man, 
or to suppose it an insurmountable barrier, 
would be to impeach the Almighty either in 
his system of nature or of grace. To the full 
extent and alongside of such a supposition 
must lie the absurdity of supposing a period 
in early life — of eight or nine years, or, at least, 
of some years between the dawn of conscious 
knowledge of right and wrong and the ability 
to study Christianity as a science, in at least 
its doctrinal rudiments — when he is neither an 
outcast from God nor a proper subject of faith 
and grace. 

Childhood is natural. With all its careless, 
heedless, forgetful instability of character; 
with all its playful trifling, its butterfly eager- 



158 Christian Cradleiiood. 

ness for momentary and changing excitements, 
its high and rapid hilarity one moment, and its 
overwhelming, tiny grief and disappointment 
the next; yea, and its constant and instanta- 
neous exposure to momentary temptations and 
aberrations — in all these, childhood is natural, 
eminently natural, and philosophical. I know 
not why it might not be as highly esteemed as 
an indispensable endowment of our nature as 
the more grave sobrieties of maturer age. 

And is there no saving faith, no regenera- 
tion proper, no holy communion with God, no 
full, high Christianity, for the tottering boy of 
three years, who values his new painted mar- 
ble more than his father values his farm ? or 
for the suckling at the breast who has learned 
to be good? Scripture teaches me that God is 
pleased with the worship of babes and suck- 
lings. 

I repeat, I know not why it would not be as 
w T ise to suppose that some people might be- 
come too old to be religious as that some are 
too young. Religion is not for some peojjle, 
but for the race. Intellectual knowledge in 
those endowed with it and prepared to exer- 
cise it— however useful it may be, and however 
responsible men may be for its use and legit- 
imate exercise — is certainly not a condition of 



The Fickleness of Childhood. 159 

grace or of faith. A child of two years is re- 
sponsible for the due exercise of the intelli- 
gence he possesses, and not for that he does not 
possess. The grace of Christ recognizes the 
infancy. 

A person late in dotage or early in nonage, 
or childhood, will be very likely to do, inad- 
vertently, many things that would be inexcus- 
able in persons of vigor of intellect. Children, 
and all imbeciles, act from the impulses of the 
instant, and from what they see and hear. 
The reflective faculties are almost dormant. 
A pious child whose religious faith is as sound 
as the soundest requires, for instance, to be 
admonished half a dozen times before break- 
fast that it is Sunday; and then, perhaps he 
has been spinning his top or shooting his mar- 
bles half a dozen times. A child of one year 
is answerable to the condition of a child of one 
year; and so of two, of three, of ten, and of 
forty. 

But the Christian religion adapts itself per- 
fectly, not half way, to the condition and cir- 
cumstances of all — as well and as fully to the 
one as to the other. This principle can be 
denied by nothing short of the stupid blas- 
phemies of infant damnation. Passive grace, 
or salvation, belongs to the child of absolute 



160 Christian Cradlehood. 

nonage, and to him only. He has no moral 
activity. This condition is the result of divine, 
not human, action. Moral perception begins, 
though we cannot tell j>recisely when it begins. 
There is, and can be, no such thing as a " line 
of accountability." There is a state of ac- 
countability which sets in in childhood at some 
indiscoverable period, and opens and develops 
very gradually and almost imperceptibly, and 
in great variety of degrees of progress, accord- 
ing to a great variety of circumstances ; and 
God deals with us all, children and aged, ac- 
cording to our exact condition and circum- 
stances. Several ability is the rule. 

There is as much religion in the rattling, 
noisy, heedless, helter-skelter romp and hur- 
rah of childhood, always ready to be brought 
to bay by proper command, as in the Sunday 
morning's study and preparation for the pul- 
pit by the minister. Both are alike natural, 
obedient, and philosophical. Each fills the 
place of divine appointment and designation. 
God never puts old heads on young shoulders, 
nor wrong heads on wrong shoulders. 

Moral accountability to God is recognized, 
we would suppose, in about the same period 
and circumstances as to parents. Does not 
the discreet mother sometimes see that the 



The Fickleness of Childhood. 161 

child of one or two years, or older, did some- 
thing wrong knowingly? and surely the Al- 
mighty has not less perception. But neither 
the discreet mother nor the Maker would hold 
the child of one year answerable to the same 
straight-edge of responsibility as the one of 
five, or the child of five to the same degree as 
the one of fifteen. The existence of moral ac- 
countability at all is one thing— the means, 
modes, and measures of its discharge involve 
other considerations. 

So the discreetness, staid sobriety, and con- 
sistency of conduct, required in adult Chris- 
tians are no more to be looked for in Christians 
from the cradle to eight or nine years than we 
should expect such prudence of behavior in 
persons of that age in other affairs of life. 
Childhood is not anti-Christian, nor wrong in 
any respect. God made it. 
11 



162 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTEE XXIII. 

CHILDREN GROWING UP SINLESS. 

ALEE AD Y the reader has been several 
times, but not too often, reminded that 
obedience to rightful authority — full, submis- 
sive, unhesitating obedience, not m$re doing 
— is the highest style of true religion; not of 
theology, of course — that is a science — but of 
religion. Eeligion is humble, submissive con- 
triteness of spirit felt and acted out. It must 
also be borne in mind that practical Christian- 
ity is not only adapted, but perfectly adapted, 
to all classes, ages, and conditions of human- 
ity where there is any — the least — moral ac- 
countability. And it must be remembered 
too that the dawn of moral perception — we all 
being born in a depraved state — implies the 
necessity of active obedience in order to sav- 
ing grace and faith. 

The question whether a child can be reared 
without sin must be understood to be practi- 
cal, and not merely theoretical. And so I re- 
ply that it is not susceptible of a categorical 
answer. It must be first inquired, What child ? 



Children Growing Up Sinless. 163 

To inquire whether it is practicable for some 
one particular child to be brought up sinless, 
and whether human nature admits of such a 
thing at all, under any possible circumstances, 
are two different things. 

And also it must first be understood what is 
meant by the terms "without sin." Does 
the question mean a state of absolutely exact 
holiness ? or exemption from such inward tem- 
pers and outward actions and words as are 
cognizable to our dull senses and described in 
Scripture as sinful? These are believed to be 
very different things. The former, I suppose, 
is incompatible with a state of probation. In 
that sense, no man lives without sin. I sup- 
pose our most fervent prayers and best acts of 
devotion are sinful, and require the constant 
grace and intercession of Christ to save us 
from condemnation. Our best righteousness is 
but miserable rags. "All our righteousnesses 
are as filthy rags." (Isa. lxiv. 6.) Conversion 
is not in the nature of a divine diploma. The 
Christian religion places us all, young and old, 
in a position or attitude where the forgiving 
grace of Christ shines full upon us, and is con- 
stantly, not occasionally, relieving us from the 
damning effects of our sinful condition. 

The question, therefore, to have a meaning, 



164 Christian Cradlehood. 

must be understood to inquire if a child can 
be brought up in the absence of such outward 
acts and the indulgence of such tempers as are 
forbidden, and are avoidable in ordinary prac- 
tical Christian life. And the inquiry must 
relate to some particular child, or to children 
in some particular circumstances. 

A child of irreligious parents, surrounded 
by bad associations, cannot be brought up 
without sin, nor indeed without a vast amount 
of wickedness. The better the instructions 
and surroundings, the better he may be brought 
up. We may look into our best families and 
best neighborhoods, and inquire if this child 
can be brought up religiously. I think it 
probable we have some parents so favorably 
conditioned that this might possibly be done 
with reasonable satisfaction. It will require 
much care and watchfulness. And no doubt 
there are many families where it might be 
partially done. And that very great improve- 
ment in this regard is within the immediate 
reach of all of us, is very certain. Surround- 
ing wickedness, in either chidlren or grown 
people, should not deter us from undertaking 
a deep and wide-spread increase of Christian 
holiness. And if we cannot accomplish all we 
would in a day or a year, we must persevere 



Children Growing Up Sinless. 165 

in the right direction, and not be weary in well- 
doing. From bad local and incidental condi- 
tions and previous neglect in our own early 
years, it might be difficult to find children with 
whom a religious life is practicable. But what 
of that? 

But surely this does not answer the question 
as it is intended to be meant. The question 
meant is, Does human nature admit the possi- 
bility, under any circumstances that can exist, 
of children being brought up without sin — 
that is, religious children from the beginning ? 
By religious children I mean religious in the 
sense that we count the better classes of re- 
ligious people to be such. I do not inquire 
for young children absolutely free from blam- 
able indiscretion, for there are no such persons 
either old or young. If there were any, I can- 
not see that they could have any further need 
for a Saviour. That question, so explained, I 
do not consider difficult to answer. 

We who live along here in these very early, 
crude, beginning ages of the world's history 
have very little idea of an entirely religious 
neighborhood of any extent. We have none 
of us ever seen one. Indeed, a whole religious 
family of any considerable size is very rare. 
And most of our religious families are — some 



1G6 Christian Ceadlehood. 

of them, if not all — more or less indiscreet, 
negligent, or ignorant as to the very best 
method of managing children and of directing 
all their own associations with them. So that 
children, even the most favored as to religious 
opportunities, who live in these current ages, 
as well as those behind us, have, and have had, 
but miserably poor opportunities for a favor- 
able beginning of a religious life. 

But the world is advancing in morals and 
religion, and consequently, in early as well as 
late opportunities of religious improvement, 
Christianity is rising, deepening, spreading, 
taking deeper and deeper hold on the moral 
vitals of mankind. If we could see it in a 
thousand years, and then in ten thousand, and 
then in a hundred thousand, or in some periods 
away in what seems to us almost inconceiva- 
ble or diuturnal ages to come, we should see it 
much changed. Perhaps the time is not com- 
paratively very distant when the most irrelig- 
ious neighborhoods of the world will compare 
favorably with the most religious ones to be 
found now. We must not be so blind both to 
Scripture and reason as to doubt the coming 
of such times. Christianity is going to be a 
success. Scripture says so, and reason says 
so. The world — all of it, every inch, to the last 



Childeen Growing Up Sinless. 167 

son of Adam— is going to be thoroughly, sol- 
idly religious to the very core. 

Now look at some of the children to live in 
some coming years or centuries, and see them 
when from birth they neither see nor hear any 
thing, either from parents or anybody else, but 
the utterances and breathings of holiness. 
They are reared in the nurture and admonition 
of the Lord. They are taught, and see all 
others taught, to worship and be good from 
early cradlehood. So we see that this great 
question, about which so much is said and so 
little is understood, needs only to be explained. 
Then it answers itself. What is practicable 
in given circumstances, and what is possible 
with the race in amj circumstances, are two 
very different things. 

So that, while God does not require impos- 
sibilities, or impracticabilities, of any of us, 
either in regard to children or others, he does 
require that we regard little children as proper 
subjects of the highest and most approved 
Christian faith, and that we teach them accord- 
ingly, and not wait for their conversion away 
along when they get to be five or six or ten or 
twenty years old. The conversion ought to be 
in the embryo dawn of the earliest twilight of 
moral perception, when to human observation 



168 Christian Cradlehood. 

it may be imperceptible; and then the child 
should be brought up in that faith. It is not 
enough that he be brought into it after some 
years; but that he be brought up in it from 
the first. The better his instructions and as- 
sociations, the better and higher will be his 
religious character. 

Jesus did not himself wait until he became 
ten or twenty years old before he set us an ex- 
ample of life. He was Jesus our Exemplar 
from the first. We see him first in the man- 
ger; and then he passes on through each and 
every successive day, week, and year, to ma- 
ture manhood. He was no more our Exemplar 
in and during any one year, or month, or day 
of his life than any other year, month, or day. 
He did not begin his religious life after awhile, 
but when he began to live. He was as truly 
and fully Jesus Christ our Saviour in early 
infancy, playing with his mother's trinkets, or 
romping in the nursery, as at twelve years 
talking with the doctors, or later in instruct- 
ing the Jewish ruler. He was our Jesus all 
the way, and at every period of the way. 
While as much of a child as other children, he 
was never out of the Church nor out of practi- 
cal Christianity. 



Loving and Fearing God. 169 



CHAPTEE XXIY. 

LOVING AND FEARING GOD. 

AMONG all the instructions, admonitions, 
illustrations, and examples, touching the 
subject of early piety in Scripture, either gen- 
eral or particular, there is nowhere the slight- 
est intimation that children are ever too young 
to be proper subjects of Christ's kingdom. 
During absolute or infantile nonage, grace 
with them is passive, or received passively; 
but its activity begins with its practical re- 
sponsibility — with the early opening dawn of a 
consciousness of right and wrong. This is the 
uniform doctrine of Scripture as well as of 
reason. Every human person, half a year or 
half a century old — the principle is the same 
— is individually responsible for active faith 
in Christ according to his means of knowing, 
and considering his social and intellectual cir- 
cumstances. 

Perhaps it never happens that children a 
year or two old or so, with ordinarily sound 
minds, are wholly destitute of a sense of mor- 
al responsibility. The degrees of strength or 



170 Christian Cradlehood. 

feebleness of this sense, and the small num- 
ber of the things to which he is capable of ap- 
plying it, are other questions. The existence 
of the sense at all fixes the personal responsi- 
bility; and" we can see no way, suggested by 
either reason or revelation, how this resjjon- 
sibility can be met but by faith in the atone- 
ment of Christ. The child does not of course 
know, and cannot be informed of, the meaning 
of the word atonement; nor does he literally or 
historically know any thing about Christ. 
The germinal principles of all moral and relig- 
ious action — rectitude, liability, blame and 
praiseworthiness, etc. — cluster in his almost 
embryonic intellect in the simple idea of do- 
ing or being good, or the opposite. That is as 
far as he has learned in the system of moral 
and religious philosophy and ethics. 

Of course the divine administration recog- 
nizes the exceeding attenuant and slender re- 
sponsibility and moral sense of the little ones. 
Christianity proper begins — ought to begin — 
with the very first opening sense of moral re- 
sponsibility. 

Now, what is the duty of parents? It 
is to bring up, nurture, teach, educate the 
child, from the first, in this admonitory doc- 
trine. Parents are not to prepare the child 



Loving and Fearing God. 171 

by moral regimen for it after awhile, but to 
bring them up in it from the first. " Train up 
a child in the way he should go," says Script- 
ure, and then, such is the immense power of 
habit, quickened by the moral sense kept alive, 
that, as he grows old, or when he grows old, 
he will not depart from it. 

This is the doctrine of Scripture. Infantile 
religion — proper, sound, heart-felt, devoted re- 
ligion, but not theological doctrines — is to 
be inculcated from the first germ of opening 
moral sense. "They brought unto him little 
children." They were little, probably not old 
enough to walk, and so were brought. And 
some said, " O take these babies away; they are 
not old enough to be religious; teach them to 
behave well, and when they get old enough to 
comprehend the responsibilities involved in a 
public profession of faith in Christ, like this 
of ours, then bring them." But Jesus taught 
them a different lesson. They were babies, for 
"he took them up in his arms." Most likely 
they were from one to two or three years, or 
under; and he said to those around him: "You 
are greatly mistaken, brethren, if you think 
these children are too young to be religious. 
Their faith — that which they ought to have 
if properly taught — is exactly the high, and 



172 Christian Cradlehood. 

sound, and acceptable kind that I recommend 
to the best of you. Their religion — that of 
which they are capable — is the best and high- 
est kind. This children's religion, and none 
other, is that which will take a man to heaven. 
You must not think lightly of little children's 
religion, for that is the very kind that I rec- 
ommend to and enjoin upon you all." 

We do not know how long the Saviour 
taught this important doctrine and lesson to 
the people on the occasion referred to by Mat- 
thew and Mark — their synopsis of his teach- 
ing is so exceedingly brief — but from all the 
circumstances, considering the immense im- 
portance of the subject, and the numerous 
times and attitudes in which it is brought so 
prominently forward, in both the Old and New 
Testaments, we are justified in supposing that 
he treated the subject somewhat fully, if not 
exhaustively. Perhaps he spoke an hour or 
two, or more. But though we are not informed 
how long he taught on the subject then, or how 
frequently or lengthily at other times, we are 
well informed as to ivhat he taught; and that is 
enough for us to know. He taught that the 
faith of little children — what it ought to be, 
and might be — was the highest, and soundest, 
and best. 



Loving and Eeaeing God. 173 

He taught that children should be brought 
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; 
that is, as I understand it, in the Church, with 
its teachings, nurture, and admonition — not to 
be so brought up as possibly to be brought 
into this state and condition after awhile. Nat- 
ure and grace put them into the admonitory 
Church-state without the agency of pastor and 
parent beyond due nurture and culture; and 
now it is the duty of parent and pastor to keep 
the children there, and bring them up in that 
way. 

The duty of parent and pastor is, therefore, 
to keep and bring up children in that condi- 
tion and relationship to God in which Christ 
placed them by birth, and not suffer them to 
stray out of it. Let them alone, or half train 
them, suffer them to become disobedient and 
to grow wicked, and they very soon, and very 
certainly, wander from the nurture and ad- 
monition in which Christ says they must be 
brought up. This teaching looks exceedingly 
plain. Such children, so brought up, are re- 
ligious from the first. They no doubt stray 
every day, if not almost every hour, into many 
unconscious improprieties, as I suppose all 
living men do in point of fact, more or less — 
for no man is absolutely pure or immaculate — 



174 Christian Cradlehood. 

but not into willful disobedience; or, if so, it 
is quickly repented of. 

Another point right here deserves notice. 
What is this "nurture and admonition of the 
Lord" in which children are to be brought 
up? Does it relate to the Church? Is the 
nurture and admonition of the Lord to be 
found in the Church, or out of it? I an- 
swer, In the Church, most assuredly. The Lord 
has no discipline, no government, no rules of 
life, no " admonition," outside the Church. Ev- 
ery thing outside the Church is wrong; every 
thing inside — really and truly inside — is right. 
There is no right place outside the Church for 
any thing; there is no right place outside 
the Church to do any thing. There ought to 
be no outside. Outside is the devil's territory; 
inside, and inside alone, is the domain of 
Christ. The commander of an army does not 
give orders to those over in the ranks of the 
enemy, whatever might chance to be the par- 
ticular views or degree of belligerency of any 
persons over there. There is but one com- 
mand given to those outside the Church — 
that is, Come in. We are not required to im- 
prove our condition outside the Church, for 
we are not allowed to be outside at all. 

Children are to be brought up in the Church, 



Loving and Fearing God. 175 

not out of it. The admonition of the Lord is 
exclusively inside. The Lord does not work 
outside except to order men in. " Train up a 
child in the way he should go, and when he is 
old he will not depart from it." Train him in 
the way — in the Church, for that is the way in 
which he should go. The command is not to 
train him for the Church at a future time, but 
in it. To prepare for entering the Church is 
nonsense. Now, just as I am, is the rule. 



176 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

CONVERSION, OR NEW BIRTH. 

CONVEESION and new birth are general- 
ly understood to mean the same thing, 
though the former implies a turning round or 
away from a former course of wicked life, and 
by divine assistance and grace entering upon 
a religious course. It is understood to imply 
the new or spiritual birth, or regeneration. 
But the term is hardly so perceptibly applica- 
ble to a person whose religious life begins at 
so early a period that there has been but little 
room for, or but little consciousness of, a course 
of known, practical, sinful life. Regeneration 
is absolutely necessary in all human persons. 
Young children have no knowledge of a wicked 
or sinful life. They have not yet learned so 
much of the world as to know that some people 
live in sin, and need to be converted. For mere 
lack of general knowledge they do not under- 
stand any thing about conversion, or the neces- 
sity of it. They suppose everybody is religious, 
or rather they do not know what religious is, 
as contradistinguished from characters irrelig- 



Conversion, or New Birth. 177 

ions. They look upon their parents and the 
older children as models of proper conduct; and 
to follow them, and do as they do, and obey, is, 
with them, the perfection of uprightness. So 
they know, and can know, nothing about con- 
version, in the most proper or technical sense. 

I desire to keep as clear as I can from all 
ambiguity of language, and all subtlety and 
refinement of criticism, and give the plainest 
ideas in plainest words, and so, if I can, to 
smooth or make plain some of the seeming 
antagonisms along here, where perhaps the 
difference is more in terms and accepted defi- 
nitions than in matters of substantial belief. 

Children are born into the world in such a 
state — -call it by what name you will — that a re- 
generation, or spiritual birth, or beginning, is 
absolutely and indispensably necessary. This 
regeneration is not necessary solely because of 
something he has done, or failed to do, but be- 
cause of his state, condition, race, nature. A 
young child is not a sinner, for he never sinned 
- — in the same sense that he is not a walker, for 
he never walked; is not a talker, because he 
never talked. He is not even a sleeper, for, as 
yet, he has never slept; he is not even an eater, 
having, as yet, not taken food. But because 
of something, we may not know what — indeed, 
12 



178 Christian Chadlehood. 

we do not know what — you may call it nature, 
original sin, inbred corruption, depravity — and 
these may be more or less correct names of 
the cause, but are certainly not the cause; 
but because of something in him, but not cre- 
ated by him, he is as surely, by his bent and 
inclination, destined to become a sinner as to 
become a walker, a talker, an eater, or a sleep- 
er. There is something in him that causes, and 
by the uninterrupted course of nature necessi- 
tates, this result. Is it because of his guilt? 
No; of what crime is he guilty? Multiplying 
synonyms would but darken counsel. 

There is a law of nature which we have all 
seen in its effects, but which none of us know 
any thing about, or at least do not understand, 
which applies here just as it applies in both 
the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Reexam- 
ine a former illustration of this point. 

Look at a young animal — any one; take a 
horse. As yet it has of itself given no indi- 
cation whatever as to what course or habitudes 
of life it will pursue ; but we see that in all 
the millions of instances heretofore, young 
animals of that race have put forth the ordi- 
nary behavior of horses, which is strikingly 
unique and peculiar as to all other animals. 
He never eats flesh, and lies at the door to bark 



Conversion, or New Birth. 179 

at and bite the intruder — nor does the dog 
ever graze in the meadow, and neigh and frolic 
with the colts; and yet, by viewing any indi- 
vidual dog, when young, and by such knowl- 
edge alone, no man could say whether his 
course of life would be like that of a goat, a 
bear, or a, panther. A young tiger, in every 
instance, by regular bent of nature, is cross, 
revengeful, and blood-thirsty; a dove is harm- 
less; an eagle flies high, and builds in the 
cliffs; a whippoorwill flies low, and sings his 
own song after sunset. And yet in not one 
of these instances did the individual, when 
young, give any indication as to what char- 
acter it would take on further than a few 
very general things. If we see it with legs, 
we should judge it would walk, and that wings 
were intended for flying, etc.; but beyond 
this we learn nothing. And yet in all the 
countless myriads of instances we see the ox, 
the hog, the mule, the squirrel, the beaver, 
robin, swallow, etc., invariably despising all 
other habitudes and clinging, as with the 
grasp of death, to those of its own peculiar, 
exclusive race. 

Now, what causes this wonderful and exact 
sameness in the character of all these several 
races? We do not know. For lack of knowl- 



180 Christian Cradlehood. 

edge, we give it the general name of Nature. 
It is something, we do not know what, that lies 
away back of itself. 

Just so of man. There he is, just born; he 
has done nothing, said nothing, knows nothing; 
he has indicated neither a malevolent nor a 
benevolent disposition. It is true that pretty 
soon he shows that he has wants, and is impa- 
tient, and capable of anger; but he shows also 
that he is capable of government; and if left 
to the bent of his nature, he is about as likely 
to become a sinner as a dog is to become a 
barker, or a mocking-bird a singer. 

And the same law rules in the vegetable 
kingdom. There is a plant a quarter of an 
inch high. It, of itself, has given not the 
slightest indication as to what it will grow to 
be. We have not the least idea whether it 
will grow a hundred feet high, live a hundred 
years, and bear nuts, or crawl a brief life on 
the ground of a few months, and bear pump- 
kins. It is only by ascertaining the race to 
which it belongs, and by comparing it with 
others of the same race, that we ascertain that 
this will bear apples, that potatoes, and the 
other corn. 

Just so of man. We know he will be — not 
that he is, but that he will be — a sinner, be- 



CONVERSION, OR NEW BlRTH. 181 

cause we see that lie belongs to a race among 
whom sin is as universal, when not prevented 
by outside agency, as cabbage - heads among 
cabbage-stalks, or as crowing and cackling in 
a hen-roost. 

This outside agency is provided, and needs 
only to be' applied. It is the grace of God in 
salvation by Christ. Without it, sin and ruin 
are certain; with it, both may be averted. 

Now, what precise words might or might 
not be used to describe this universal sinful 
tendency brings up questions more of biblical 
or theological criticism than of practical, 
moral, and religious utility. 

Man is born not to sin, or with a necessity 
of sinning, nor for the purpose of sinning, but 
with a tendency, or inclination, to sin. This 
tendency is fixed and certain, but that does by 
no means prove that he must sin; nor is it 
proof positive that he will sin. He has a cer- 
tain tendency that way, which, if not checked 
and prevented in time from ripening, will cer- 
tainly ripen into a sinful life; and in this 
age of the world, and in the course of our ob- 
servation, we have so uniformly seen it ripen 
that way that we hastily conclude it must be 
so. There is no absolute must, or necessity, 
in the case. Let this tendency be checked, 



182 Christian Cradlehood. 

and thoroughly arrested, the earlier the better, 
and let a religious — that is, an obedient — tend- 
ency be set up in its stead, and then the pros- 
pect is different. And what I insist is, that 
there is no necessity for waiting any number of 
years, neither one nor forty, for a more fit 
time for conversion. To wait a year is a dis- 
advantage; to wait two years is still worse; 
and three, or ten, or forty, is still worse. Bring 
them up, not from a late period, but from the 
first, in the nurture and admonition of the 
Lord. 

Admonition is instruction in duties, caution, 
direction. Let it begin at the first. In other 
words, let conversion take place at the proper 
time. Do not contentedly suffer the child to 
live at all in sin. Let him be converted as 
early as practicable — that is, the first year, 
month, or day, whether you can designate it 
or not. I have tried my best, and can frame 
no better rule to go by than this : Bring him 
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. 
This rule is neglected — nay, violated — in all 
cases of bad, angry, disobedient, or uncon- 
verted children, of any age. 



Child's Faith and Conversion. 183 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

child's faith and conversion. 

THAT my observations on this head may 
be as intelligible as is desired, it is ex- 
pedient to begin with some general remarks 
on the subject. 

No religious theory, either for children or % 
grown people, need be looked for in this essay 
that does not begin with the new birth, regen- 
eration, or, if any prefer it, conversion. And 
yet this conversion is oftentimes viewed er- 
roneously and disadvantagecusly by many 
persons. While it is always th^ proper begin- 
ning of religion, it is often the beginning of a 
very poor religion, and which soon turns out 
to be none at all. Many persons console them- 
selves with the reflection that they have been con- 
verted. This consideration alone furnishes 
no ground whatever for consolation. The 
mere historic fact is of no value. It may be 
that one person who was and one who was not 
converted, and other things now equal, stand 
upon the same ground precisely. For conver- 
sion to be of any value, it must be continuous. 



184 Christian Cradlehood. 

Is the person now converted? That is the only 
consideration of value. To take a proper step 
in the right direction of a long journey, and 
the continuing to walk in it, are very different 
things. The advantage is with him only who 
holds out to the end. 

And again, we are sometimes taught that it 
is of very great, if not indispensable, advan- 
tage that we remember and can specify the 
day, hour, time, and place of the conversion. 
# But then w r e must not forget that we can take 
cognizance only of our own doings and expe- 
rience, and not the doings of the Almighty. 
The latter are not phenomenal at all. It is 
only the effect of conversion, or regeneration, 
that w r e feel. And then again, as we hope 
presently to see, if people were converted at 
the right time, or somewhere near the right 
time, it would be impracticable ever to remem- 
ber the time and place of the conversion. The 
person would not remember a time when he 
was not converted. Conversion is the be- 
ginning, not the completion, of a religious 
life. 

Again, we hear of "powerful conversions." 
And these are by some considered by far the 
best or most satisfactory kind. The mean- 
ing is, that the converted person is greatly or 



Child's Faith and Conversion. 185 

powerfully agitated, or exercised, in mind. 
However satisfactory it may be for a person to 
identify his conversion by strongly-exhibited 
marks, I cannot regard such conversions as the 
most satisfactory, or generally the most endur- 
ing. Certainly the best and most satisfactory 
conversions that can be are those which take 
place at or near the most proper time — that is, 
the earliest time — and consequently those that 
make the least exhibition on the outward 
person. A child converted at two years old 
has certainly, all though life, a great advan- 
tage, other things equal, of one converted at 
ten, or twenty, or a later period; provided 
always that the converted state be well main- 
tained. 

The longer a person continues to roam in 
sinful indulgences, be it a year or forty years, 
the poorer Christian he makes. This is inev- 
itable. The very knowledge of his past sins, 
as well as the almost omnipotent power of 
habit, which he never can get entirely free 
from, continues to follow and haunt him as 
closely as his personal identity. Who has 
not observed that persons converted late in 
life very seldom possess the fullness and 
vigor of active Christianity that would have 
followed a life of early piety? The constitu- 



186 Christian Cradlehood. - 

tion of human nature has something to do 
with men. 

While conversion, or new birth, is of itself 
always the same, the outward, or sensible, ef- 
fects of it are as dissimilar as human temper- 
ament, circumstances, and disposition, are dis- 
similar. No two are alike. Look, then, at the 
conversion of a child of two years and a man 
of forty. The former has less disturbing, con- 
scientious remembrance of sins committed than 
the latter. The comparison is as the Missis- 
sippi River compared to one of its rills. His 
conversion was specific, clear, genuine, but it 
was seen, felt, or experienced, as a gentle breath 
compared with a tornado; or, they may be 
compared thus : There are two oaks — both are 
crooked, and require to be straightened, and 
nothing more. The one is a quarter of an 
inch high, soft, and tender as wax; still it is 
crooked, and requires only to be straightened 
— the force of the most poetic zephyr, or the 
weight of a dew-drop, is sufficient; and now it 
is straight, and in becoming so has made no 
great noise nor created any great alarm in the 
world. And the other, in like manner, is only 
crooked, and requires only the same kind of 
process; but look at it: it is a hundred feet 
high, the giant peer of the clouds; its branches 



Child's Faith and Conversion. 187 

have defied the storms of a hundred winters; its 
limbs gnarled and knotted — some of them are 
two or three feet in diameter, and see how very 
crooked they have grown! Now, straighten 
that tree, and you require the force of a hur- 
ricane, or an engine of a thousand horse-power, 
or both, and the operation will wake up the 
neighborhood round about. There is a differ- 
ence in these straightenings. 

Now, who will not say, What a pity that tree 
was not straightened when it was tender and 
only a quarter of an inch high? That 's when 
trees ought to be straightened, and when peo- 
ple ought to be converted. And then let the 
straightened tendril, whether tree or child, be 
kept straight — brought up in the way he should 
go. One conversion under three or four years 
is worth six at twelve, twenty at twenty, or 
forty at forty. 

"When we notice the efforts often made for 
the conversion of persons, either congregations 
or individuals, day after day, and year after 
year, and then see that those same persons, 
ministers or not, probably never spent an hour, 
or the tenth part of it, in direct labor for the 
conversion of children under eight or ten years, 
is not the impression irresistible that they do 
not consider small children subjects of con- 



188 Cheistian Cradlehood. 

verting grace at all? I have heard ministers 
of my Church relate remarkable instances of 
"early piety," when boys or girls of nine or 
ten years gave good evidence of regeneration, 
thus proving that early piety ought to be 
taught and promoted. And I have been mor- 
tified to see men who knew so little think they 
knew something. They would hardly listen to 
the idea of a child being converted at the age 
of four or five. Why, they would say — at least 
their conduct would say — "He hasn't been 
sinning more than two or three years; how 
could he be converted? Moreover, his con- 
version was not powerful enough; neither does 
he relate it in the regular, accepted, revival 
forms of language." 

The doctrine evinced by the practice of 
many of us is that a child cannot be consid- 
ered converted until he can stand a pretty good 
theological examination on the subject of the 
new birth, and use a good deal of Mr. Watson's 
language in regard to it; and so, not being 
able to do this at the age of eight or ten, he 
must of course be presumed to be unconverted, 
and treated as such, whether or no. Whereas, 
it seems plain to me that a child ought to be 
converted long before he is old enough to know 
theologically, or otherwise specifically, or in- 



Child's Faith and Conversion. 189 

tellectually, any thing about conversion. Can- 
not a child feel an impulse before he knows 
that there is such a word as impulse ? Cannot 
a child be sorry before he can describe sorrow 
by language? Children learn language at a 
very late period. They know every thing else 
before, they begin to learn words. 

In the very last letter I have from my wife 
she relates in regard to a grandchild, not yet 
two years old, how much he knew, with not 
the ability to speak a word. All moderately 
smart children are almost perfectly well ac- 
quainted with every thing they have seen or 
heard long before they can talk. How little 
we know about our children! Notice the well- 
taught child at family-prayer, or the blessing at 
table. He understands devotion as well as he 
ever will. I knew T a boy of three years who on 
one occasion had inadvertently turned up his 
plate at table before saying his Mylordy, and 
he peremptorily refused to receive his food. 
His plate must be returned empty and placed 
in the usual position, and when he said his 
Mylordy, then let it be turned up and helped. 
This was done with all apparent devotional 
concern. Is there any better religion than 
that? The Saviour recommended it for adop- 
tion by the apostles. 



190 Christian Ceadlehood. 

Was ever a person converted at the right 
time within your knowledge ? Of course the 
conversion, no matter when, is well; but how 
much better would it have been a year before, 
or a year before that, or before that, or before 
that! The right time is the best time. 



Children Once Converted. 191 



CHAPTEE XXVII. 

CHILDREN ONCE CONVERTED. 

I)EGENERATION is a better 'term than 
X conversion, especially when applied to a 
small child. Of course this is the starting- 
point for all Christianity. But alas! we know 
but too well that the cases of Christian life 
and death are by no means to be numbered 
with the instances of regeneration. My own 
belief is that the former are few, while the 
latter are many. If we could see the compar- 
ison we should be startled with amazement. 
My belief is that among us generally nowa- 
days not one regeneration in ten or twenty, or 
perhaps in forty or more, results well. And 
especially is this the case among children. 
The children of pious parents who receive rea- 
sonable religious instruction are pretty gen- 
erally regenerated early in life. 

In the first place, not one-tenth part the in- 
strumental labor and force is required to bring 
small children into the Christian faith as those 
of ten or fifteen years or more; and in the sec- 
ond, far more constant oversight is required 



192 Christian Ceadlehood. 

to maintain it. Children, no matter how re- 
ligious, are thoughtless, volatile, and fickle. 

There is a pious mother, with children 
grown and growing up around her, whose life 
is weighed down with sorrow because they are 
all irreligious. They were every one converted 
by her owji pious labors in the lullaby lessons 
and prayers she taught them when the soft, 
wax-like heart received the simple truths 
greedily; but alas! the poor woman, following 
the drift and fashion around her, said to herself 
— if she thought at all, which is by no means 
certain: "Dear little ones, too young, far too 
young, to be religious now; but I hope they will 
become religious when they get old enough." 
And so, considering, or seeming to consider, 
that outside the Church, among bad boys and 
girls, is the best place for children to maintain 
a religious life, with the consent and approval 
of father and pastor, the children are thrust 
out of the Church. The religion she has so 
well assisted to establish is neither recognized 
nor encouraged, and shipwreck is about as 
likely to take place as in an attempt to navi- 
gate Niagara Falls. 

The child was not conscious of his religion 
in any scientific or theological sense. He 
knew what he felt, though he could not by any 



Children Once Converted. 193 

means describe it, and, with no one to explain 
and encourage him, it never occurred to him 
that that was what the grown people call re- 
ligion. It never occurred to him, because he 
had never been taught it, that a little boy 
could have religion — that is, such religion as 
they talk and preach about in the Church. He 
supposed that all there was for him to do was 
to be good — tolerably good — and wait till he 
should grow old enough to be religious. And 
when he grew into his teens, these tender feel- 
ings — to which he did not attach much im- 
portance at the first, because not so taught — 
are all dissipated, and the religion to which he 
looked forward with some solicitude is all 
gone, gone, gone over the hills and far away. 
He is a confirmed backslider, a veteran in sin, 
and, nine cases in ten, a settled hater of Christ. 
I have known several melancholy illustra- 
tions of these things. Some years ago, the 
eldest child of two persons, whom I would 
class among the most pious and discreet peo- 
ple I have known, was a girl — an unusually 
smart child. At the age of three, four, and 
five, and along there, she gave the most clear 
and satisfactory evidence of divine grace and 
faith. Some instances I heard related of her 
faith and power in prayer were remarkable and 
13 



194 Christian Cradlehood. 

convincing. She is now a grown woman, ed- 
ucated and accomplished, and — an infidel. 

And does any one say this is strange ? How 
is this ? I think it is most natural, and noth- 
ing is more easily accounted for. She grew 
up outside the Church. And the man who 
looks 'for much religious fruit outside the 
Church has something yet to learn of human 
nature. The returns to the Church and to 
piety, under such circumstances, are the ex- 
ceptions — rather rare exceptions; the ship- 
wrecks and loss are the rule. 

Not long since, I asked a Methodist preacher 
to buy some religious books, reminding him 
that his boys — three grown young men — might 
need them. "O," said he, "my boys are all 
infidels; they would not read a religious 
book! " I was not at all startled at such an an- 
nouncement, for I saw r the cause plainly. The 
father and mother were exemplary, pious; the 
children were converted in the nursery at the 
mother's knee, and then turned out to imbibe 
the out-of-the-Church religion, and to expect 
Church-religion — when they should grow old 
enough ! 

I know a young man, piously reared, of 
much more than ordinary intellectual capacity, 
a veteran infidel. He was one of the very best 



Children Once Converted. 195 

and most pious children I ever knew; but he 
took the usual course. 

Now, if any one thinks these uncommon 
cases — exceptions to the general rule — he is 
greatly mistaken. With more or less varia- 
tion, this is the condition of four-fifths of all 
the young people around us, and older ones 
too, who were brought up by pious parents. 
They may not be strictly infidel, but they are 
solidly irreligious. 

The cure for all this is plain, and the means 
are at hand. Bring the children up in the nur- 
ture and admonition of the Lord. Instead of 
this we bring them up out of it, with the hope 
of getting them into it after they grow up. 
Nineteen times in twenty, this is a vain hope. 



196 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTEE XXVIII. 

CONVERSION — JOINING CHURCH. 

I HAVE argued that it is the absolute duty 
of all men to be in the Church. This fol- 
lows necessarily and logically upon the suppo- 
sition that Christianity is an undeviating rule 
of conduct. The two propositions are but dif- 
ferent modes of stating the same thing. Then, 
you might as well inquire if this or that per- 
son is eligible to tell the truth, to be virtuous, 
to keep the commandments, as to inquire if 
he is eligible to Church-membership. To in- 
quire whether this or that person ought now 
to be in the Church, or is eligible to member- 
ship by reason of age, stature, moral fitness, 
or any other reason, is to show that the in- 
quirer has yet to learn what the Church is. 

1 have a reverend and venerable friend and 
brother who, if I understand him rightly, is a 
little troubled on this subject. Conversion, he 
thinks, must go first, and Church-membership 
afterward, following a personal application for 
it, and be accompanied by an approved state- 
ment of experience. And there may be others 



Conversion— Joining Chcjech. 197 

hampered in the same way. My friend, once 
upon a time, illustrated his objections to mem- 
bership before a profession of faith in an ar- 
gument embodying the following poser: 

On a rail-car he chanced to sit beside a nice 
little girl of perhaps twelve years, and intro- 
duced a conversation, intending to give it a 
religious turn. He inquired of her home, 
parents, etc. Her father was a Baptist, her 
mother a Christian, as was also an elder sister. 
And then ensued the following questions and 
answers: 

"And do you belong to the Church? " 

" O yes, sir." 

"When were you converted? " 

"I do not know, sir." 

" Did you repent of your sins, and pray to 
God for Christ's sake to forgive your sins? " 

"No, sir." 

"Then, why did you join the Church? " 

" "Well, I always learned that I ought to be- 
lieve in Jesus Christ as the Saviour, and be 
baptized, and then I would be in the Church; 
and I thought this was right, and did so." 

"Now," said my friend, "look at that pict- 
ure. That is the character of a Church of 
unconverted persons. You say c everybody 
ought to be in the Church.' This girl, mis- 



198 Christian Cradlehood. 

taken and deluded, is in the Church. What 
sort of Church will you soon have? " 

My reply is this : First, from what my friend 
stated of this little girl, I do not know whether 
she was or was not converted, or had been con- 
verted. I incline to regard her a good Chris- 
tian girl, but do not know. Quite likely she 
had been converted, and may or may not have 
been at that time. She was certainly a good 
girl, religiously inclined, whose religious in- 
struction had probably been but poor, and 
likely much neglected. Few men of large re- 
ligious experience have not known persons of 
far more age and experience than this child, 
of sound internal holy life, and who would 
not have sufficient self-confidence to declare 
promptly to his or her pastor, and much less 
to a stranger, in categorical answer to a direct 
question, "I am converted." Young Chris- 
tians are generally timid and hesitating. 

I am sorry if my friend has yet to learn that 
there are many pious children whose piety you 
must learn, if at all, in a more indirect and 
delicate manner than by a bold and open ques- 
tion, put by an elderly man, an entire stranger, 
in a momentary rail-car conversation. Few 
religious children would have answered more 
promptly than she did. My friend is a Boan- 



Conversion-Joining Church. 199 

erges, confident and outspoken, of three-score 
and ten years, and more, and the replicant a 
timid child, a little girl of twelve years, in the 
presence of a stranger. 

Secondly: The child had probably never had 
the advantage of better religious training than 
an unfavorable view of her answers would in- 
dicate. But it is marvelous my friend should 
have so entirely failed to discover what the re- 
ligious error of this child was. In this unfa- 
vorable view of the case, the little girl was cer- 
tainly in error, and, though it was as big as a 
barn-door, my reverend friend strangely failed 
to see it. Overlooking her real fault, he blamed 
her for doing righ t — for obeying God. That she 
ought to have joined the Church when she did, 
I do not see how any Christian can question. 
As to this matter, her blame was — or that of 
her parents — that she did not join long before. 

She certainly did right in joining the Church, 
and as certainly did wrong in failing to do an- 
other thing of vital importance. As is the case 
with thousands — whether in the Church or not 
is not important — she probably failed to be re- 
ligions, or, in Scripture language, to become 
converted. She did one thing right, exactly 
right — a more proper thing never was done by 
mortal man — but failed to do another vitally 



200 Christian Cradlehood. 

important thing. Her error was not as to what 
she did, but what she failed to do. And these 
two things being comlierent and coessential, the 
thing done availed nothing, in all likelihood. 

If my friend had continued the conversation 
with the little girl, which he no doubt would 
if there had been opportunity, it would of 
course have been on this wise: 

" My dear Miss, I am sorry to see you in such 
religious error as you represent. I am an old 
man, as you see, and a minister. I have had 
much experience among religious people, and 
if you will listen to my advice it may be of 
lasting benefit to you. I am glad to see you 
religiously inclined, for it is a good thing for 
young people, as well as older ones, to be relig- 
ious; but you did very wrong in joining the 
Church — that was very irreligious. None but 
converted people must join the Church. It is 
very well to join the Church after conversion, 
but very sinful to do it before. People must 
be converted outside the Church, not in it. 
Inside the Church is the place to live a relig- 
ious life, but not the place to become religious. 
The place, and the only true and proper place, 
to become religious, or more pious, is outside, 
among irreligious people. Inside the Church 
is a very bad place to be converted. The rule 



Conversion — Joining Church. 201 

is, to become converted first, and join the 
Church afterward. Now, my young friend, 
remember this, and act accordingly. 

" So, the proper course for you to pursue is, 
first to undo the wrong you have done — go out 
of the Church. Go immediately to your pas- 
tor, and- tell him to take your name off the list 
of members; and if he asks you why, tell him 
frankly you want to get converted. Tell him 
you have learned much more about this mat- 
ter than you knew before — that you have had 
the subject explained by a Methodist minister. 
And you may intimate too, very decidedly, if 
you wish — for that is true — that the Methodist 
divines know much more concerning these 
subjects than the Baptists or the Christians 
do. Go out of the Church first, and out there 
among irreligious people, among sinners like 
yourself, pray, and repent of your sins, and 
when you seek religion long enough, God will 
convert your soul. And when it is certain you 
are converted, and the pastor is perfectly sat- 
isfied, he will then take you in. Then you will 
be right." 

This is the doctrine of my friend. He wants 
to keep the Church pure. He does not believe 
— to use his own words — " the Church is a hos- 
pital," a place for people to grow better, or 



202 Christian Cradlehood. 

improve and rise from a low and defective re- 
ligious state to a higher and more healthy state 
of grace. This would degrade the Church, 
in his estimation. 

And there stands my friend to-day, a doctor 
of divinity, and minister of high standing, and 
that is the teaching with which he teaches 
teachers, and instructs others, and leads the 
young and tender lambs. How can Christian- 
ity be looked for among our children amidst 
such preaching as this? 

I believe the doctrine "Be sure you are con- 
verted before you join the Church" is most dan- 
gerous and destructive to Christianity. And 
why our religious authors, newspapers, bish- 
ops, and ministers, do not drive it from the 
Church is, I think, because they do not look 
at it fully in the face. 

This is not a question, as many seem to sup- 
pose, of mere Church purity or impurity. It 
is a question respecting the field or domain 
of the pastor's labor. Is this confined to the 
Church ? Is it his exclusive duty to look after 
the purity of the Church? or, does a part of it 
lie outside in labors to disciple outsiders? 
The latter, most assuredly. And even if this 
be left out of the account, is the purity and 
religiousness of the Church best promoted by 



Conversion — Joining Church. 203 

"guarding the doors" so as to keep out per- 
sons of honest religious proclivity and intui- 
tion, whose experience has risen no higher 
than a sincere desire to flee from the wrath to 
come, and be saved? There are many such 
persons, and a vitally important question is, 
"Will their religious state be most likely to im- 
prove outside or in? I insist that outside is 
an unfavorable place to do any thing. The 
faithful and intelligent pastor always encour- 
ages the entrance into the Church of all per- 
sons who could or would join in good faith. 
Good faith could not mean less than a sincere 
desire to be saved. Church coldness, worldli- 
ness, or irreligion of any sort, is best cured in 
the Church. Or, if not, turn them out! Be con- 
sistent. 



204 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTEE XXIX. 

of child's faith. 

RELIGIOUS, or what is often called sav- 
ing, faith does not necessarily include 
even a correct A B C of theological knowledge. 
A child's faith must of course come down to a 
child's condition. He does not know ABO lit- 
erally, nor figuratively, applied to any thing. 
He has neither physical nor literary ability to 
pronounce a word of his mother-tongue intel- 
ligibly; and how could he be expected to know 
more about the external things of Christianity 
than other matters of knowledge? 

He knows nothing about a revelation, nor 
about many other things pertaining to the very 
rudiments of religion, and yet, though at first 
it may to some seem contradictory, he is quite 
far advanced in real substantial religious 
knowledge. 

Whatever may be said about the natural 
tendency to sin, call it by what name you will, 
and his certainty to drift into it — yea, and wal- 
low in it — in the absence of proper early relig- 
ious training, he has a far earlier and greater 



Of Child's Faith. 205 

precocity for the acquisition of religious 
knowledge than of any other kind. You can 
teach a child religion — most valuable things 
about religion — long before you can teach him 
any thing else outside the narrowest cradle or 
nursery limits. There is something planted 
in children by Nature, I suppose, favorable to 
the acquisition of the most valuable religious 
knowledge; yea, and religious sentiments and 
feelings too. This is not faith, nor piety, but 
an aptitude or fitness for the very early recep- 
tion of religious knowledge, reverence, and 
holy feelings. 

Children, in ordinarily favorable circum- 
stances, well cared for, will have a keen sense 
of religious reverence, awe, and some sense of 
religious responsibility, by about the close of 
the first or second year. A neglected, fretting, 
frisking child, or one who has been handled 
and dawdled only as a doll, and knows nothing 
except to be pleased with toys, will witness the 
evening prayer of an older sister, or a mother, 
and will keep frisking about, whining, and 
looking to be pleased, caring nothing for what 
is going on. You will often see a child of 
three or four years, in a religious family, that 
cannot be kept still at family - prayer. The 
poor neglected child has never been taught 



20G Christian Cradleiiood. 

any thing but to be pleased with toys and 
prattle. 

Yonng children are wonderfully imitative, 
and if well cared for will soon catch the idea 
of prayer, and at once almost can be impressed 
with the reverence and awe of devotion. There 
is a wonderful aptness for it, if not an instinct 
in it. A well -taught child of two or three 
years has a perception and recognition of de- 
votion as clear as he is likely to acquire after- 
ward. And let him be properly trained and 
cared for, and mothers of not more than ordi- 
nary carelessness will be surprised to find how 
early the little fellow will take in the idea of 
devotion; and it will be with the child not a 
mere something to look at, but it will be devo- 
tion, distinct and separate from all other con- 
siderations. 

To the great mass of parents who know al- 
most nothing about such things, it would be 
truly wonderful to know how little well-direct- 
ed attention is required to inculcate in very 
small children sentiments and feelings of true 
religion. They understand what is going on 
at church as well as anybody does. Prepara- 
tions for family-prayer awe them into silence, 
and inspire them with reverence. Many who 
have never studied the character of children 



Of Child's Faith. 207 

regard this as a mere habit of keeping still. 
It may be so with neglected or carelessly man- 
aged children, but with a child properly man- 
aged it is true devotion. He thinks about God, 
and about being good; he reflects that God 
is very good, and is now looking upon him. 
His cle,ar and distinct thoughts about being 
good, and the necessity of it, are in the clear- 
est and most wakeful activity. If spoken to 
about God's will, he might not understand you, 
but he knows very well what God wants, and 
he is earnestly endeavoring to do what God 
wants him to do; and when his devotional 
thoughts are awake, he would not do other- 
wise. In long services, he becomes wearied 
with stillness, and may go to sleep. Children 
act by moments, not by hours. 

That simple, unhesitating obedience in rec- 
ognition of God and in subserviency to him is 
what I understand to constitute the faith rec- 
ommended in the gospel. Away with that un- 
scriptural and enthusiastic notion which post- 
pones early Christianity until a later and more 
intellectual period — that teaches that "chil- 
dren will be wicked anyhow, being created in 
sin!" I know of nothing that we have to do 
about the creation of children. They are 
already created before we have any thing to 



208 Christian Cradlehood. 

do with them. Our business is to bring them 
up in, not out of, the nurture and admonition 
of the Lord. 

I know of nothing either in the nature or 
usual practical character of Christian faith 
that is not of a high order in a well-taught 
child of tender years, even long before he could 
give a plausible definition of it. 

A child was once brought into court to tes- 
tify as a witness in an important case. The law- 
yers said: "O the boy is too young, too young 
entirely. It is preposterous — a mocking of 
justice." The judge took up the little fellow 
into his lap, and talked with him about some 
familiar matter, and let him see some other 
witnesses sworn. He then asked the little boy, 
in presence of the lawyers, if he knew what it 
was to take an oath. The lisping child an- 
swered, "Da mils' tell de truf." The judge de- 
cided promptly that there was no incompetency 
because of age. The chief-justice of the na- 
tion could not give a better answer. But if 
they had gone on further to catechise the child, 
and ask him what truth was, he might have 
been as much puzzled for an answer as Pilate 
was. And so, if we were to catechise a child 
as to what faith is, he might give as poor an 
answer as some of Paul's interpreters make 



Or Child's Faith. 209 

him give. There are some things — many 
things — that children know as well as grown 
men and women ever can know. A child with 
three apples gives one to a sister — he knows 
he has two, and no more, left. He knows that 
as well as the astutest mathematician knows it, 
yet he could not tell what subtraction means. 

Just so of religious obligation. No one can 
understand what religious obligation is better 
than a child, though he could not describe it. 
I repeat that it is worthy of all grave consider- 
ation that the very first thing a child can un- 
derstand outside the simple nursery routine 
is religious obligation — obligation to God — 
that God requires him to do right. And that 
God requires us to do right is the highest and 
weightiest religious obligation I know any 
thing about. The child who would desist from 
doing something he wanted to do because God 
would be displeased if he should do it is a 
Christian of a high stamp. 

But the faith of a child is of a very high 
order of purity, from the very consideration 
that he is a child of great inexperience. A man 
has had his mind poisoned with a thousand 
considerations — if they could be accurately 
counted they would amount to millions — inter- 
posing doubts about religious obligation in a 
14 



210 Christian Cradlehood. 

thousand forms. He has all these to overcome, 
but the child has not. The child receives re- 
ligious instruction with the utmost reverence, 
and with no more doubt about the truth of it 
than of his own being. He has not the least 
hesitation. Perplexing doubts never disturbed 
him ; infidelity never disturbed him ; German 
and French free-thinkers, and the trumpet- 
tongued Humes and Paines, have never assailed 
him. He has not read the plausible nonsense 
and gilt-edged lying monstrosities of Huxley, 
Tyndal, and Ecce Homo; nor has the infidelity 
of novel-reading attacked him. Neither have 
his passions — strong, stalwart, and ferocious — 
surrounded him, and threatened his capture 
and his overthrow. His heart is soft, sus- 
ceptible, and not preoccupied. Where can 
be found the man or woman, or even the boy 
or girl of twelve years, in so favorable a con- 
dition to imbibe and enjoy the simple faith of 
Christ? 

A child should never be permitted to go out 
from the confines of the nursery among all 
sorts of people, mixing with bad books, bad 
words, bad conduct, and bad thoughts, without 
having his mind and heart well stored with 
true evangelical faith in God. And this faith 
must not be mistaken; it must not be a loose, 



Of Child's Faith. 211 

undefined system of negative keeping - still 
conduct, generally acceptable to the rest of the 
family, but religious faith. A child of three 
years — perhaps not your child, but a well-in- 
structed child of three years or under — can as 
well understand his obligations to God as he 
can twenty years later. 

Taking the great and diversified natural 
constitution as I find it, with such examination 
as I have been able to make of it in a life of 
some length and some activity, I am unable to 
see any better, if indeed any other, use for the 
period of nursery-life than to use its seclusion 
for the very grand purpose of getting a good 
start of the devil in religious bracings, and 
laying the strong and solid foundations of 
high evangelical faith. I know not of the 
impediment in making bones and muscles 
grow as much in two years as they usually do 
in twenty, but I do not see how the safeguards 
of the nursery could be dispensed with in the 
best formations of the best religious faith. 

Surely the best existing faith to be found 
now anywhere is that which received its strong 
granite foundation and massive bracings in 
the nursery. Other things equal, no man can 
fail to see that the man of faith all through 
life, who had a strong nursery faith to carry, 



212 Christian Cradlehood. 

and did and does carry it, unsullied, unshat- 
tered, is the better Christian therefor. Paul 
would have been a better Christian if he had 
had it, and so would David, and so would any 
man. 

Faith formed at a late period has necessa- 
rily to contend against many and immense dis- 
advantages of preoccupation. No wonder the 
Saviour recommended nursery faith; because 
it is, and cannot fail to be, the best. 

Christian culture and agriculture have great 
similarity in many important respects. In 
both cases the weeds spring up and begin to 
grow simultaneously with the true plant; in 
both cases the earlier the destruction of the 
former begins the better; and in both cases 
constant cultivation is alike necessary. Let 
the agricultor suffer the weeds and grass to 
grow, and constantly take deeper and deeper 
root, attaining greater and greater strength, 
until the true plant has attained one-fourth or 
one-third of its growth, and now two things 
are easily seen: first, for even the most mod- 
erate growth double, treble, or quadruple the 
labor is necessary; and, secondly, a full growth 
of the plant is impossible. The time is past. 
The analogy between the two cultures is per- 
fect. 



Of Child's Faith. 213 

But it may be objected that children believe 
in Christianity merely because they are told 
so — they would as readily believe the wildest 
romance. This is very true. The difference 
is that the Christianity they believe is true, the 
romance is not. What matters it how credu- 
lous a person may be so that he believes what 
is true? Religion is just as true without as 
with a logical and intelligible assent. A child 
can tell you that the sun is ninety-five million 
miles distant; and if so taught, he would tell 
you it was ninety-five miles distant. The dif- 
ference is that the one is true and the other is 
not. The great object is, that we know the 
truth; the means or method by which we come 
to know it is quite unimportant. Truth is as 
important acquired one way as another. 



214 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTEE XXX. 

THE RIGHT TIME FOR CONVERSION. 

ANY thing that ought to be done at all 
ought to be done at the right time. 
Conversion — the commencement of a relig- 
ions life — ought to take place at the right 
time. The disadvantage of passing by the 
right time to begin a religious life can never 
be overcome. Men and women of late conver- 
sion may pass along very well, as it may be 
considered, and may succeed in getting to 
heaven; but whether one may know it or not, 
he is never the man he would have been if 
more years of religious experience had been 
added at the beginning. This is the cause of 
most of the irresolution, the feebleness, lack 
of value to the Church, lack of devotion, lack 
of family religion, which we see and mourn 
over, in the Church all around us. 

No man attains the full proficiency for which 
nature endowed him, either in moral or phys- 
ical enterprise, who does not embark in it in 
childhood. The earlier the better. Our ideas 
— many of us — of the giant strength of habit, 



The Eight Time for Conversion. 215 

especially of sinful habit, are entirely too fee- 
ble and diluted. Sin is not a matter of so 
small import as many of us suppose. The 
child of five or eight years is a giant and 
a veteran in iniquity. Not so when he was 
one, two, or three. The very best years of 
the whole life-time are lost never to be re- 
gained. 

Instead of considering these things prop- 
erly, many of us seem by our conduct to re- 
gard early sinfulness up to twelve, or fifteen, 
or twenty, as a sort of necessary matter-of- 
course; but little religious, well-directed labor 
is bestowed upon children of such ages, and 
we consider ourselves remarkably fortunate if 
our children be brought back to the Church 
and to God by the time they are twenty. 

Men of observation are well aware that oc- 
casionally children of three or four years have 
given satisfactory evidence of converting grace 
— either grace to live with or grace to die with, 
perhaps more particularly the latter. It is 
with children as with men or women — grace 
uniformly develops to outward observation far 
more fully on the near approach of death than 
at any other time. And we know very well, or 
at least will see very clearly if we look into the 
subject a little, that converting grace is very 



216 Christian Cradlehood. 

likely to exist in children long before we can 
discover any satisfactory outward evidences 
of it. 

This results from two causes: first, the child 
himself is not able, from mere intellectual 
incapability, to discover, identify, and recog- 
nize, a state of conversion as a distinct, sep- 
arate, and specific state. He recognizes some- 
thing and feels religious, but does not know 
but everybody feels that way. He has never 
heard and studied elaborate descriptions of 
the unconverted and the converted states as 
those of us have who have for hundreds of 
times seen them held up in contrast with each 
other. A clear knowledge of sinful life as a 
state, apart from incidental acts of wrong- 
doing, and the opposite, are things to be learned 
as matter of information; they do not come by 
mere intuition. These considerations cannot 
be enforced too strongly, or repeated too often. 
Secondly, our means of communicating with 
small children about such matters are very 
slim. They can but very feebly describe their 
feelings of aches and pains in sickness. They 
cannot describe any thing very well. If thirsty, 
they cannot tell you so; they can only utter gen- 
eral complaint, or hunt for and point out the 
dipper or pitcher. If tired and sleepy, the 



The Eight Time for Conversion. 217 

child cannot tell you. He feels bad, but hard- 
ly knows why. 

To be able to feel and to describe one's feel- 
ings are very different things. The one does 
by no means necessarily imply the other. 
Small children have very little knowledge of life 
and the world around them. Ninety-nine hun- 
dredths of all the preaching is to get the people 
to unlearn the vicious things they have learned 
in the several years of a vicious life. Young 
children have very little of this to unlearn. 

Was any person ever converted at the right 
time that we know of? Better late than never, 
it is true; but would it not have been better 
at an earlier period? Look at our revivals — 
our numbers converted and added to the 
Church as reported from our meetings; and 
where are they, in a year? in a month? in a 
day? or, I may well add, within an hour after- 
ward? Their conversions were right enough, 
with one very important exception. It was at 
a wofully bad time. That mountain of un- 
hallowed experience fastening on the converted 
boy or girl, habits of error piled up like mount- 
ains, are a heavy burden to carry. If these con- 
versions had occurred at a better time, things 
would be very different. It is hard to reap figs 
where thistles were sown and cultivated. 



218 Christian Cradlehood. 

I would greatly like to see a Church of a hun- 
dred members all young converts, where not 
one knew when he was converted— he had been 
religious from his earliest recollection; he 
does not know when he was not religious. 
What an array of Christian soldiers this would 
be ! The public effect of such a Church would 
be overwhelming. 

And will any one say this is croaking, ask- 
ing too much, or speculating about religion? 
So far from it, every one will acknowledge that 
these things ought to be ; and therefore it is the 
duty of all Christian men and women to aim at 
that point and labor for it. On the contrary, 
we are most of us asleep on the great subject of 
early piety, so vitally important to the Church. 
Indeed, many of us hardly seem to know 
there is, or can be, such a thing. Many of us 
call youthful piety early piety. Many of us 
have been so superficially taught as almost to 
be unwilling to recognize piety in small chil- 
dren at all. 

The loss to the Church, to family piety, to 
the cause of Christ, from this one considera- 
tion, is believed to be fearfully great. The 
most that is generally aimed at with children 
under twelve years of age is to get them to be- 
have well — that is, to commit no outrage of a 



The Eight Time for Conversion. 219 

flagrant character; and people, even pious peo- 
ple, are generally very content with this ab- 
sence of high crime. They are counted good 
children. Parents congratulate themselves. 
Of course this is better than the criminality 
we so often see around us in our families, but 
it falls so far short of Christian duty and Chris- 
tian privilege that, looked at carefully, it is 
lamentable. It establishes in parents and 
children, and general society, as well as in the 
Church, a habit, custom, and moral tone that 
are in the highest degree damaging. 

A child of fourteen has had ten long years, 
by far the longest and best of the entire life, 
of well-recognized or tolerated out-of-the- 
Church irreligion. He has lived this long 
with the well-settled idea, strengthening and 
strengthening every day, that that was a very 
proper way to live. This irreligious out-of- 
the-Church habitude has acquired far more 
strength in this period than it could in any 
other decade of his life — yea, more than in all 
combined. 

One-twentieth part of the labor necessary to 
bring a man of twenty-five into the Church, 
if well, properly, and continuously directed, 
would have kept him in from the first. Pre- 
vention is more efficacious than cure. Ninety- 



220 Christian Ceadlehood. 

nine hundredths of the wickedness in children 
is the result of parental and pastoral neglect. 
Of course weeds will grow; but the agricult- 
urist was put there with muscle and means to 
destroy them. 

The Saviour said to Peter, " Feed my sheep; " 
and he also said, "Feed my lambs." Each 
expression has its meaning. One thing in 
common with the feeding of sheep and lambs is 
that they are both to be fed inside the fold- 
not the sheep inside, and the lambs out. This 
is unnatural, and was never intended. The 
lambs are to be fed as well as the sheep; and 
in doing so, proper care is to be observed that 
both the food and the feeding be adapted and 
arranged to suit the lamb-like capacity of the 
tenderer ones. The proper feeding of sheep 
would be of little or no advantage to the lambs. 
Nor is it enough, as we generally do, to suffer 
the lambs to be present, a few of them, and let 
them witness the ceremony of feeding the 
sheep. They must themselves be fed. 

Many preachers — might I not say most of 
us — as a quaint writer expresses it, seem 
greatly to misapprehend the Saviour's mean- 
ing when he said, "Feed my lambs." They 
understand him to mean, Feed my giraffes. 
Now, a giraffe, otherwise called a camelopard, 



The Eight Time foe Conversion. 221 

is a very tall animal, with an enormous length 
of neck. His food is most convenient for him 
when placed about eighteen or twenty feet 
high, and the rough boughs and bark suit him 
well for food. That kind of food would not 
suit lambs. Their food must be of a tenderer 
sort, and be placed down on or near the ground. 
The Saviour did not allude to giraffes. He 
meant lambs, and directed that they should be 
fed. 



222 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTEE XXXI. 

OF CHURCH-MEMBERSHIP. 

IF the Church were an institution set up by 
authority — either divine or human author- 
ity- — in the nature of a corporation with a 
charter; that is, some fundamental laws of 
government, such institution being instrument- 
ally designed to promote Christianity, as High- 
churchmen teach — if this were the character 
of the Church, then there would be room for 
questions of eligibility to membership in it. 
Such an institution must of course have con- 
ditions of membership. They might be the 
payment of dues; requisite age, sex, or color; 
so much religion, to be judged of by a com- 
mittee; the performance of certain duties, or 
the like. Then a compliance with these con- 
ditions, whatever they might be, would open 
the door of admission. All that is easily un- 
derstood. Then we have only to turn to the 
constitution, and see if the applicant comes up 
to the conditions. He may or may not be eli- 
gible. 

But when I see the Church is not an insti- 



Of Chukch-membership. 223 

tution of this kind at all; that it has not and 
never had a charter, or law of government; that 
it is merely a Christian brotherhood, the seg- 
regation and congregation of Christian people 
brought together by the spontaneous gravita- 
tion and coherence of Christian love and re- 
ligions, principle — when I see that this is the 
character of the Church, then I see no place 
for questions about personal eligibility. We 
might as well talk about persons being eligible 
to truth-telling as to Church-membership. It 
is simply a duty. 

When I see the Church never had, and in 
its nature never could have, prescribed condi- 
tions precedent of membership, and no condi- 
tions of membership or social coherence at all 
other than such as naturally and necessarily 
inhere in the very idea of personal Christian- 
ity, and make up its very essence — when I see 
these plain things, how can I see room for 
questions whether this or that person is legally 
eligible to Church-membership ? 

The relation of baptized children to the 
Church, who are irreligious, is the same as 
any other irreligious baptized persons, who 
repudiate and ignore their solemn religious 
vows. Where the blame rests, is another ques- 
tion. The fault is not with the baptism or the 



224 Christian Cradleiiood. 

membership, but the personal conduct. It is 
like any other case of backsliding. Human 
persons ought to be in the Church, because 
that is a universal duty; but that does not im- 
ply that irreligious conduct ought to be in the 
Church. 

It is the gravitation and segregation of 
Christianity that forms the Church; but this 
cannot prevent the occasional, or even frequent, 
introduction of unworthy material. Indeed, 
all the material in the Church is, in a very im- 
portant sense, unworthy, and it is the duty of 
the Church to reform itself, the lowest as well 
as the highest. The Church- is not the result 
of legislation, nor of adjudication, but is the 
spontaneous moving of individual hearts to- 
ward God and each other under the movings 
of the Holy Ghost. The Church is natural, 
not legal, and forms itself by its own sponta- 
neity. 

And if religion appertains to children, why 
does not the Church ? It would be mere violence 
to separate between the Church and Christian- 
ity. Religion and Church are not two separate 
and distinct things, each complete in itself; 
they are twin and coinherent aspects of one 
and the same thing. The Church-membership 
of children, therefore, of whatever age, must 



Of Church-membership. 225 

be viewed in the light of that of other per- 
sons. Children are merely a part of mankind, 
and though not capable of commerce, mechan- 
ism, philosophy, or general industries, by rea- 
son of mental and physical nonage, they are 
fully capable of Christianity. 

Children have rights too — rights of a high 
and sacred character. It is the sacred duty of 
parents to protect and defend their religious 
and ecclesiastical rights, as much so as any 
other rights. Their Church-rights are as val- 
uable and dear to them as to the rest of us. 
The Saviour is in the Church, religion is in the 
Church, salvation is in the Church. 

When troubles rise, <md storms appear, 
There may his children hide. 

Bereave me of what else you may — valua- 
ble, near, dear as they may be, you may elim- 
inate my name from among men, and take 
away the light of the sun from above me, and 
forbid me to w^alk upon the ground that is be- 
neath me — but leave me, I pray you, the Church 
which my Saviour gave me. As it ought to 
be my first, let it be my last, boon of earth; 
and in it deprive me not of my little ones ! 

And is the Church more valuable to me than 
to the little three-year-old prattler who has not 
had the opportunity of acquiring so much in- 
15 



226 Christian Ckadlehood. 

formation respecting its value as I have ? His 
lack of appreciation of his Church-rights is no 
more significant than the same lack respect- 
ing his rights of property, or any other fran- 
chises. 

I was glad to see Bishop Marvin's remark:* 
" It is not a matter of small consequence what 
relation our children sustain to the Church — 
whether they shall come upon the arena of that 
contest in which eternal life is lost or won in 
their place in the militant host, or enter it 
single-handed and without support." Verily 
it is not! 

While the folly of supposing the Church to 
possess and impart intrinsic grace is among 
the greatest of popular follies, and is certainly 
one of the most injurious Romish errors still 
lingering in some shapes among us, it is nev- 
ertheless true that the mere fact of member- 
ship in the Church exerts a most wonderfully 
beneficial effect upon the mind and heart of 
the young, as well as those who are older. 

The notion of some is, or seems to be, that 
we should not bind our children in Church- 
membership, or matters of religion and con- 

*"When this was written, it was expected the Bishop 
would read it. But alas! 



Of Church-membership. 227 

science. This is exceeding flimsy and thought- 
less. So, then, we should not bind them to 
live in a certain neighborhood, lest when they 
grow up they might choose to live in some 
other, or in none. I must not bind my child 
to industry, for I do not know but he might 
prefer a lazy, indolent life; I must not bind 
him to habits of sobriety, for I do not know 
but he may prefer the life of a drunkard. And 
for the same reason I must not educate him; 
I must not bind him to decency and good man- 
ners, nor to obedience, nor truth-telling, and 
so forth. It might as well be said that we 
may not provide food, clothing, medicine, or 
any other necessary provision, as that we may 
neglect the children's Church-membership. 

And yet how loosely is this high duty gen- 
erally attended to ! How few are in the Church ! 
Most children of Methodist parents, we may 
presume, are baptized, but this "relation to 
the Church," as it is sometimes called, seems 
to be of no practical benefit. They grow up 
with it the same as without it. They are as 
clearly and fully out of the Church as those' 
unbaptized. They grow up in open and well- 
recognized non - membership, and generally 
without a hope of conversion, except at some 
almost or quite adult period, by means of such 



228 Christian Cradlehood. 

general ministrations as are usually directed 
to veteran sinners. 

The Sunday-school makes wholesome pro- 
vision for this state of things as far as its 
instrumentality, as now organized, can reach 
it; but it reaches it slowly and imperfectly. 
Let us hope for such improvement as may 
render mere baptism something more than 
nominal. A proper home-discipline will find 
most children practically religious before they 
go to Sunday-school. 

Our pastoral theology, what little we have 
amongst us relating to children, does not con- 
template their conversion until a late period. 
It provides that first the child must be in- 
structed in biblical history, geography, biogra- 
phy, etc., whereas it seems to me certain that 
the religion of the Bible should be first taught 
and well inculcated. This is where his earli- 
est susceptibilities lie. The piety of Chris- 
tianity can be solidly riveted in his little un- 
suspecting heart long before he can be taught 
much about Mesopotamia or the character of 
' Esau. But by all means this should be done 
in the Church, not out it. It is of vast im- 
portance that children should understand that 
they are in the Church. They should be taught 
to fear the outside world; a knowledge of the 



Of Chubch-membebship. 229 

mere fact that they are inside cannot fail to 
exert a powerful influence. 

A child ought to be so trained — that is, it 
ought to be practicable for him to be so trained 
— as never to be subjected to the perplexing 
questions about joining the Church. Outside 
persons, young or old, somewhat religiously 
inclined, are constantly harassed with such 
questions as, When is he going to join; wheth- 
er he feels like it; how long it may be safely 
deferred; whether the preacher is esteemed 
well enough; whether this or that person will 
join also; and many similar ones. Such ques- 
tions benumb the sensibilities, and lessen the 
importance of Church-alliance. 

Our system of child-culture would seem to 
be susceptible of improvement from the con- 
sideration that so few children of Methodist 
parents grow up, live, and die, in the Church. 
When Methodist children go to other Churches, 
it is for merely social or still more unworthy 
motives. But many go not even to other 
Churches; many grow up Church-haters. 

For these evils it is easy to point out a rem- 
edy; the far greater difficulty is to provide 
the means of adopting it. Is not our ministe- 
rial labor directed proportionally too much to 
the Church, and not enough to the families? 



230 Christian Cradlehood. 

But which preacher is to begin? Moreover, 
our Conference rules do not contemplate much, 
if any, labor among children — especially small 
children — where there is so much need for it. 
Practical innovation upon a routine is not so 
easy. The preachers generally do what they 
are expected, or what the rules require, but do 
not generally go beyond. 



On the Baptizing of Children. 231 



CHAPTEE XXXII. 

ON THE BAPTIZING OF CHILDREN. 

ALL persons ought to be baptized. Proper 
subjects of baptism are human persons. 
Christ died for all. That settles the question 
of what ought to be the boundaries of the 
Church. All persons ought to acknowledge 
Christ. 

But young children cannot apply for or ac- 
cept baptism directly for themselves. It must 
be done for them, if at all, by parents, or other 
persons acting in the stead of parents. A 
minister could not pick up an unknown child 
in the street and baptize him. Baptism im- 
plies that there be recognition and record of 
it. It is an ecclesiastical act. 

But we are told we must not baptize chil- 
dren of persons who are not believers. Who 
says so? and secondly, What is meant by "be- 
lievers? " Infidel parents would not be likely 
to apply for, or desire, baptism for their chil- 
dren. Must the pastor judge of the precise 
necessary belief, or faith, of such parents — de- 
termine as to its doctrinal soundness and cor- 



232 Christian Cradlehood. 

rectness of the profession of it? This would 
require a Romish priest, if not a pope. Must 
such parents be members of some Church ? and 
what Church, as a condition precedent? As 
well as I can understand the matter, it amounts 
to about this : that we must not baptize a child 
unless the parents be religious enough. But 
precisely how religious, might be difficult to 
determine. 

The fact that parents, or guardians, desire 
baptism for their children, or willingly accept 
it, would seem to settle the question of their 
belief so far as seems to be necessary for this 
purpose. 

The baptism of young children or infants 
should not, it seems to me, be made a specialty, 
but regarded as mere baptism in general. I 
see no reference, either in Scripture or the 
reason of the thing, to infant baptism or adult 
baptism. I do not see two kinds, but only one. 
The Scriptures speak of baptism, and refer it 
to the human family with no particular refer- 
ence to age, size, or sex. It makes no restric- 
tion. There is, however, this general principle 
to be observed: that a duty neglected to-day 
should be performed to-morrow. It is upon 
this principle that the baptism of grown peo- 
ple is recognized. Let baptism be attended to 



On the Baptizing of Childken. 233 

as it ought to be, and there could be no adult 
baptism. It is but a dernier ressort to remedy, 
as well as may be, a neglected duty back yon- 
der. Baptism is for mankind; Christianity is 
for mankind. 



234 Christian Cradlehood. 



CHAPTEE XXXIII. 

A REMEDY. 

KEEP the children in the Church. If, 
through ignorance, negligence, or other 
incompetency of parents, or of pastors, we can- 
not keep all in, we can begin, or improve, and 
keep some in. Some of our best families and 
best pastors can set a most gracious and whole- 
some example. Do not wait until you can 
teach the little ones Bible-history, but begin 
early to teach the solid principles of Chris- 
tianity. Teach religion first, and give them 
biblical information afterward as they may 
begin to be able to understand it. Early re- 
ligious lessons should be few and short — the 
whole of religion can be comprehended 'in 
a very few words. The child has already 
graduated in the great and important science 
of obedience, and knows as much about that 
as he ever can know. He has already learned 
about God and Christ, and can very easily 
comprehend that God loves good children, that 
Christ died for them, and will take all good 
boys and girls up' to heaven. Let the sister 



A Eemedy. 235 

of five years be accustomed to teach her brother 
of three. No better assistant teacher is needed. 
Let these lessons be constant, and as well as 
may be at stated times, especially at bed-time. 
Let no day pass unimproved. It requires but 
a minute or two of time, and that not exclusive 
of other employment. Do not fail to let them 
understand all the while that they are in the 
Church. Do not turn them out, either for- 
mally or informally, actually or virtually. 
Teach the children all to notice carefully and 
distinguish between right actions and wrong 
ones. A complaining, scolding, threatening 
woman cannot do these things — neither can one 
who has not the time; but a prudent, intelli- 
gent woman, who regulates her household af- 
fairs well, and is sensibly and prayerfully alive 
to the importance of early piety, will find no 
difficulty whatever in giving full attention to 
all these things. She will be surprised to 
learn how easy it is when she tries it. The 
children will be ready and anxious for the 
evening or morning lessons. There will be 
nothing irksome or tiresome about it; every 
thing will be cheerful and pleasant. 

One difficulty at present is that we have no 
catechism suited to the nursery; but some- 
body will make one. We have plenty foi 



236 Christian Cradlehood. 

larger children, but none for beginners. Sev- 
eral persons have tried it, but I have not known 
one to succeed well, except one that never went 
into general use. This was written some years 
ago by the lamented Eev. E. S. Eosenbaugh, 
late of the Memphis Conference. It was the 
best I have seen, but it never went, so far as I 
know, beyond the columns of the Western 
Methodist, then published at Memphis, Tenn. 

Bishop Marvin's words are worthy to be re- 
membered and repeated: "God has ordained 
in the Church many efficient aids, many means 
of grace, through which the earnest penitent 
and more advanced believer are alike strength- 
ened and helped forward in the Christian race. 
The fellowship of saints and the ordinances 
of religion quicken the spiritual perception 
and sensibilities, and encourage and strengthen 
faith. The mere fact of membership in the 
Church exerts a most wholesome effect on the 
mind and heart. It is not a matter of small 
consequence what relation our children shall 
sustain to the Church — whether they shall 
come upon the arena of that contest in which 
eternal life is lost or won in their place in the 
militant host, or enter it single-handed and 
without support." These are wise words, and 
ought to be well heeded. 



A Bemedy. 237 

Of course all Christians say, Bring the chil- 
dren into the Church; but how? and when? 
These are the practical questions. We have 
tried the pulpit-preaching and youthful sea- 
son from twelve to twenty years, and we get 
in one in twenty or forty. The cradle and 
nursery season, with lessons and training 
adapted thereto, will succeed far better. It is 
a thousand times more natural, far more script- 
ural, and far more easy of accomplishment. 
Let teaching be properly directed, and man- 
kind is never found so teachable as in the cra- 
dle and nursery. Such lessons are ingrain 
and lasting. 

The f oolishest thing ever dreamed of by un- 
wise and indolent parents and their thought- 
less friends is, " Let the children grow up un- 
fettered, and choose Churches and Church- 
relation for themselves — I will not bind them 
in matters of conscience." Hear the Bishop 
again on this point: "How totally they mis- 
conceive the nature of the parental relation. 
The fact is that during infancy the parent does 
every thing for the child, and is obliged to do 
this by the very facts in the case. He must 
believe for the child, and act for him in every 
interest, even the most vital. The child is in 
his hands, incapable of acting for himself, and 



238 Christian Ceadleiiood. 

lie must act for him, or let him perish. The 
responsibility is on him, and he cannot avoid 
it. What food the child shall eat, what atmos- 
phere he shall live in, what medicine he shall 
take, the parent must determine. Nor does he 
make a title-deed in which he does not cove- 
nant for his child as well as for himself. If 
you say a man cannot choose for his child, you 
contradict nature itself and the customs of 
mankind from the earliest ages. If a man 
may not bind his child by covenant in the mat- 
ter of religion, it is an exception to the author- 
ity he holds in all other relations. If this be 
so, an advantage is lost to the child in this high- 
est of all interests that is secured to him in all 
other cases." 

These are wise words, but our practice falls 
sadly short of the doctrine taught. We have 
very few children in the Church. Can we not 
improve in this matter? The children ought 
to be in the Church. I was glad to hear Bishop 
Andrew say, in connection with this subject, 
from the presiding-chair of the General Con- 
ference of 1870, that he never joined the Church 
— he never breathed out of it. It looks unnat- 
ural to see parents in the Church and their 
children out. Well-directed effort cannot fail 
of considerable improvement. 



A Practical Suggestion. 239 



CHAPTEE XXXIV. 

A PEACTICAL SUGGESTION. 

I HAVE long since been inclined to the 
belief that some change in the disposal 
of our regular ministerial labors might, and 
probably would, be beneficial to the cause of 
Christ. Is it certain that our ordinary pas- 
toral labors are planned and adapted to the 
best possible advantage ? 

While I would by no means undervalue the 
regular public pulpit labors of our pastoral 
ministry, I cannot but think that a portion of 
those labors might be employed in fresher, 
more promising, and more fruitful fields. 

Mne-tenths of our pulpit - preaching is to 
persons over sixteen years old, and four-fifths 
of it is to those over twenty; so our entire 
pulpit labor is directed to the reclamation of 
persons who have been from ten to forty years 
living in open, known, and willful rebellion 
against God and his laws. With these persons 
open and notorious irreligion has grown into 
a settled habit. This habit has become about 
as settled as the color of the Ethiopian's skin, 



240 Christian Cradlehood. 

or the spots of the leopard. Our preaching is 
therefore not so much against the corruptions 
of our nature and the sinfulness of sin as such, 
but against the hundred-fold additions thereto 
made by the ten thousand repetitions of resist- 
ance to the offers of salvation. The great dif- 
ficulty in the conversion of sinners is not so 
much our moral disabilities inherited from a 
corrupt ancestry — though this is by no means 
generally, if ever, overestimated — but it is the 
additions thereto, a hundred or a thousand- 
fold multiplied, in each individual case, by 
a persistent and constant rebellion running 
along through years and years of sinful life. 
The average of means and labor required in 
the conversion of one person of twenty or forty 
would be found sufficient for the conversion of 
fifty or a hundred, if properly directed, at the 
age of even five or six years. 

The disadvantage by loss of time is here far 
greater than that of the farmer who would 
begin to cultivate his corn after it begins to 
ripen, with the weeds higher than the corn. 
By neglect he has prepared for himself hard 
work and a sickly harvest. That this is some- 
what our condition, is easily seen. Not over, 
or not much over, one in every hundred we 
preach to becomes a Christian after the age 



A Peactlcal Suggestion. 241 

of twenty; and, like the corn, after having 
stood half his life-time or more among, and 
being crowded by, weeds rank and poison- 
ous, and as tall as himself, a dwarfish stalk 
and small product are all that need be looked 
for. 

Is this picture overdrawn? It is not half 
drawn; it will not more than half reach the 
actual historic facts. Let any man look around 
and see. 

Now, the question is not only pertinent but 
vital, whether we cannot adapt and dispose 
our pastoral force in some plain, easy, practi- 
cal way, harmonizing with nature and with 
Scripture, which will promise to secure at least 
some of these lost early advantages. It is a 
poor agriculturist who uses no implements 
suited to any weeds but those which are full- 
grown, or nearly so, large, hard, and deep- 
rooted. And are not our implements of relig- 
ion mainly, if not uniformly, adapted to this 
class of weeds only? 

The following suggestions may seem radical, 
or like taking too large a step at once. If 
radical, they are all the better for it. No 
healthful improvement in any thing is very 
valuable that is not radical. I know of noth- 
ing more radical than the gospel. As to tak- 
16 



242 Christian Cradlehood. 

ing a large step at once, if in the right direc- 
tion it cannot be too large. 

Suppose we at once discontinue one-fourth 
or more of our regular Sunday-preaching — 
say, ordinarily, have public service at church 
once on Sunday, the regular morning sermon, 
and public prayer-meeting once a week. In- 
cidental and irregular worship need not per- 
haps be interfered with. Circuit preachers 
will conform as near as may be. 

This relief from one-half his pulpit labor 
and preparation will give the pastor time for 
regular pastoral family-preaching, or "visiting," 
if that term be preferred. This family-preach- 
ing should be made regular and systematic. 
The visits would be generally, perhaps uni- 
formly, appointed beforehand, and at times 
most agreeable to the family and the preacher. 
After prayer, reading the Scriptures, etc. — the 
children of course all being present — a half 
hour will be spent in explaining to the chil- 
dren, especially the smaller ones, the few great 
facts of Christianity, viz. : that Jesus, being the 
Christ of God, died for children to save them, 
loves them, will take them to heaven if they be 
good, etc.; that deceased children have gone 
to heaven if they were good; that to be good 
is to obey ma and pa, and mind quick; must 



A Practical Suggestion. 243 

not quarrel with little sister; and such simple, 
practical teaching as may be adapted to the 
understanding of the children severally, spend- 
ing sufficient time with each one. Of course 
our Sunday - school literature will be inter- 
spersed and explained, referring to Sunday- 
school' lessons, etc., and to the teachings of 
former visits. Scripture historic incidents will 
be introduced and impressed upon the little 
minds, and the whole visit made as interesting 
as possible. Particular attention will be paid 
to the smaller ones: children are so wonder- 
fully — I know not but I might almost say 
miraculously — imitative that the lisping babes 
can be easily drawn into these religious les- 
sons, if skillfully conducted; and thus with but 
little labor, with no flourish of splendid per- 
formance, and no great ado, a solid foundation 
for Christian character and Christian life may 
be secured, which can probably be done in no 
other way so well. 

These family-preachings must not be inci- 
dental, occasional, or left at loose ends, but be 
regular, systematic, and have all the solemnity 
of the congregational Sunday-preaching. The 
children know when the preacher will be there 
again, they anticipate some of his inquiries, 
and will be ready to answer questions and re- 



244 Christian Cradlehood. 

hearse lessons left them before, and will feel 
disappointed if by some accident the preacher 
does not come. 

Of course, in all this the full, complete, and 
regular Church-membership of the children is 
supposed and recognized, and the children 
themselves are made to feel and appreciate it. 
This alone is a powerful advantage. 

Now, who will venture to say that it is not 
probable, if not morally certain, that even a 
few family lessons of this kind, followed by 
suitable training, might not do more toward 
building up a solid Christian character, in 
any given instance, than a hundred sermons 
preached to the same person twenty years aft- 
erward, as we uniformly find such persons in 
their adult years ? At least, I prayerfully be- 
lieve the subject, further drawn out, explained, 
naturalized, and Scripturized, is worthy the 
serious consideration and examination of our 
sagest and wisest masters. 

In these pastoral preachings the parents and 
older members of the family will by no means 
be left out of the account. The pastor will see 
that each family be furnished with a copy of 
this book, or a better one on the same subject, 
with recommendations, explanations, etc. ; and 
in order to do which with proper advantage, 



A Pkactical Suggestion. 245 

lie himself must be fully impressed with the 
great natural and constitutional truth that the 
little tiny teachings and habits of early child- 
hood always and almost exclusively form the 
basis and staple of character throughout after- 
life. 

We must, as well as possible, reach the 
mothers of our children with two great prac- 
tical lessons : first, the vital necessity of estab- 
lishing a habit of obedience in their children 
from the first; and, secondly, the ease with 
which this may be done. The difficulty is, just 
here, as is well known, that most, or perhaps I 
might say almost all, of these mothers them- 
selves were badly trained, and know but little 
of what cheerful obedience is. Most of them 
know nothing about it. A mother evinces a 
disgraceful ignorance of children by declaring 
that this and that one never could be governed. 
She never tried it, and knows nothing about 
it. If she did not herself teach the child to 
govern her during the child's first year or two, 
she sat stupidly by and saw the ungovernable 
spirit rise and grow from a germ no stronger 
than a zephyr to the giant proportions of al- 
most absolute sway, while she herself crouched 
in submission at the feet of an imperial suck- 
ling or prattler. We must, as well as we can, 



246 Christian Cradlehood. 

make mothers see and understand these sim- 
ple and important things. We must make as 
many of them as we can understand that there 
is almost nothing so simple and easy of accom- 
plishment as to establish a habit of happy, 
cheerful, ready obedience in any child, if set 
about and persevered in from the first; but 
that if attempted in any way short of from the 
first, it will be found an almost or quite fruit- 
less undertaking. 

We must reach the mothers through the 
children, and reach the children through the 
mothers. Prayer, patience, persistence, and 
perseverance, will accomplish wonders; and 
I can conceive of no more practical and prom- 
ising mode than that suggested in this chapter, 
or something like it 

It is questionable with me whether a dis- 
continuance of one-half our public Sunday- 
preaching will much, if at all, lessen the good 
effects of that particular mode of ministering 
the gospel; and that the other half of the 
minister's time can be more profitably em- 
ployed directly among the mothers and chil- 
dren at home, looks probable to me. 

Our public preaching is too public, too gen- 
eral. It is adapted too much for everybody, 
and not enough for anybody. Much of it lacks 



A Peactical Suggestion. 247 

specification and personality. There was great 
force and naturalness in Nathan's mode o£ 
preaching to David. "Thou art the man" is 
not difficult of comprehension. 

Is it too much to say that our children get 
no preaching? It would hardly do to say that 
without some qualification. A few go to 
church occasionally — scarcely one in a hun- 
dred goes regularly; and when they go they 
hear very little they can understand. Al- 
most all the sermons we hear nowadays are 
both calculated and intended for the most 
intelligent and best-informed portion of the 
congregation. The well-grown girls and boys, 
as well as the most uninformed part of the 
congregation, generally get but little preach- 
ing adapted to them, while the children of 
ten years and under get, it might almost be 
said, none. 

I will at least ask this question, and bespeak 
for it some special attention at the hands of 
our bishops, and leading men of the Church, 
in and out of the ministry: Cannot some way 
be contrived by which the gospel can be prac- 
tically and advantageously ministered to the 
children? Cannot they have practically, as 
well as nominally, the advantage of a portion 
of the labors of our pastoral ministry? 



248 Christian Cradlehood. 

That our children now, in our present mode 
of working, have but very poor religious priv- 
ileges, in proportion to our grown people, is 
the humiliating confession which the truth 
imperatively demands. 



The Lord's Supper. 249 



CHAPTEE XXXV. 

THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

ANOTHEB thing almost uniformly neg- 
lected among us is the bringing our 
children early to the Lord's Supper. I know 
of no class of persons more likely to be ben- 
efited by this Christian duty than children of 
five or six years. The exclamation, " That is 
entirely too young!" is made with no good 
reason. It is much easier to make an objec- 
tion than to state a reason for it. 

If the Christian duty and benefits of this 
sacrament were an open question, one of mere 
expediency, to be declined or adopted by each 
person for himself as he might judge best, 
then and in that case I could see reasons why 
a person should wait for adult years and op- 
portunity to study theology and inquire into 
the reasons of it in its application to his par- 
ticular case. But it is not such a case. The 
duty is absolute, and not subject to human 
opinion or revision. 

" But surely a child should be old enough to 



250 Christian Cradlehood. 

understand about it, and know what lie is do- 
ing." 

Yes, all that is necessary. You cannot com- 
municate to a very young child any devotional 
idea, or but few ideas of any kind; you can- 
not tell him any thing about God, or Christ, or 
heaven. But the child of three years or so 
will soon begin to catch the devotional idea of 
blessing at table, and of family-prayer. He 
will mark the tone and solemn silence of the 
older children, and grasp the imitative idea. 
I may be permitted to suppose that in relig- 
ious families children are seldom, if ever, per- 
mitted to reach the end of the fourth year, or 
probably the beginning of it, before the child 
is both taught and made accustomed to his 
little nursery-prayer. He understands what 
prayer is as well as the mother does. He has 
asked the Lord for his blessing and protection, 
and he confidently expects it. 

Now, will any man say that a child of suffi- 
cient years and intelligence to understand 
prayer and participate profitably in it is not 
capable of understanding the Lord's Supper 
and of participating in it with equal probable 
profit ? Is there more science or theology about 
the latter than the former ? The child knows 
exactly what you tell him about each and both, 



The Lord's Supper. 251 

and lie knows no more. Tell him to pray his 
little tiny prayer, "Now I lay me clown to 
sleep/' and that the Lord will hear him and 
take care of him, and he believes it; and in 
like manner tell him the Lord said that all 
good people must take this sacrament to re- 
member him, and he would love them more and 
take care of them better, and he believes that, 
and acts accordingly. 

And how much more than that does the par- 
ent or the pastor know ? Did we discover prayer 
and the Lord's Supper by learning, science, 
or human knowledge ? Who knows more about 
it than a child of five or six years can be told 
and understand? Beyond this simple ele- 
mentary knowledge level to the comprehension 
of a child, the learned doctors are not agreed 
to-day. The Lord's Supper is an outward, 
formal, ceremonial acknowledgment of sub- 
serviency and obligation to God, commanded 
by Christ. The man who knows more than 
that about it has learned more than I have. 

Bishop Marvin talks so well along here — let 
us hear him again: 

" My neighbor says, ' I will not bind my child 
in the affairs of his soul. He shall be free. 
He shall choose for himself.'' This is quite tak- 
ing to the popular ear. 



252 Christian Cradlehood. 

" But I say my child shall not be free to go 
wrong, either in religion or any thing else, if I 
can help it— and the more especially in relig- 
ion than in any thing else. I will bind him 
by commands, by covenants, and by all the 
most sacred obligations, to serve God. I will 
environ him with motives that he shall feel it 
to be unnatural and monstrous for him to dis- 
regard. I will make it in the highest degree 
difficult and painful for him to go to hell. 

" To this view of the case the Church must 
be brought. There is much need of light 
among us. Our Church needs toning up great- 
ly on this subject. Thousands in the Church 
use little effort to turn the young, unpracticed 
feet of their children from the way of death." 

In the particular case now before us noth- 
ing is needed but a little encouraging counsel 
and example. How much of this is done 
among us? I will ask the first pastor I meet, 
How often have you talked plainly to parents 
and children on the subject? How often have 
you explained to both that all that was neces- 
sary for a child to know, or understand, about 
the Lord's Supper, in order to a proper par- 
ticipation in it, is that Jesus directed it to be 
done in order that we might the better remem- 
ber that he died for us ? 



The Lord's Supper. 253 

Is that a difficult and abstruse lesson in the- 
ology for a child to learn? I never adminis- 
tered this sacrament in my life with more sat- 
isfaction and solemnity than to children of 
five or six years. My grief has been that there 
were so few. I want to see the children grow 
up - in this nurture and admonition. Keep 
them in it. Why let them go out, lest they 
stay out? Verily, Bishop, our Church needs 
toning up on this subject. 

What can look more lovely or more Christian 
than to see a parent or elder brother or sister 
leading the little one to the sacramental altar, 
where they both, or the whole family, kneel 
together in public ceremonial remembrance of 
the Lord of the Church? It is in this way 
that our little ones become sacredly familiar 
with the Church and its duties. Its ceremo- 
nies and services become interwoven into the 
very texture of the child's thoughts and feel- 
ings, and make up his practical religious being. 

I am indebted for lessons along here re- 
specting the children of the Church to one of 
the young preachers of the district where I 
was presiding elder years ago. He had more 
children and smaller ones on his Church-reg- 
ister than any other pastor — sometimes* more 
than all the rest of the district; and he had 



254 Christian Cradlehood. 

more cliilclren and smaller ones at his prayer- 
meetings and at the Lord's table than any of 
the rest. And I asked myself, How is this? 
And I soon saw how it was. 

Let the bishops "tone up," and let presid- 
ing elders and pastors tone up. Verily, the 
Church needs toning up. 

If the foregoing observations are sound, they 
ought to be acted out in the Church. To in- 
augurate these things into a practical working 
system may require time and labor. I think 
it will be generally admitted that the theory 
is pretty correctly stated — substantially stated 
at least — as far as stated at all. The j3ractical 
work requires the whole working machinery of 
the Church. Will our bishops and leading 
ministers consider the propriety and expe- 
diency of bringing our children fully and prac- 
tically into the Church? And will not the 
entire Church, pastors and people, wake up to 
a more true, natural, and apostolic system of 
Christian Cradlehood? May the God of 
heaven spur our energies and stimulate our 
zeal! 



Conclusion. 255 



CONCLUSION. 

IT seems to me tliat under a good system of 
nursery-training and discipline our minis- 
terial force could be made far more efficient 
than it now is. Our ministrations are now for 
the most part, may be three-fourths or twice 
that amount, employed in the undoing of habits 
formed and character established not by Adam, 
as many vainly suppose, but by ourselves. 
Adam is charged with a thousand things of 
which we ourselves are guilty. Our condition 
at birth, call it by what name you will, may be 
set down to the account of Adam, or original 
sin; but not the condition of the boy or girl 
of five, ten, or twenty years, or the man or 
woman of forty. This great increase of wick- 
edness must be charged to our own account. 
We have added to the "original" stock of 
moral depravity, or sinfulness — call it by what 
name you will — perhaps forty or five hundred- 
fold. This difference between the " original" 
stock and the present amount may not be ex- 
actly measurable by us, as we have not the 
means of doing it, but it is as plainly observ- 



256 Christian Cradlehood. 

able as a mountain is distinguishable from a 
mole-hill. A young child has a tendency, dis- 
position, or inclination, to sin, but no actual 
sin. When grown to sinful capability, the 
child has added to this tendency a vast amount 
of accumulated guilt. His corruption has 
grown largely. To estimate this difference, or 
to ascertain how much of the corruption of a 
person of ten or twenty years is new, and how 
much old, we must compare the condition of 
the new-born infant with the advanced person. 
Suppose this difference to be tenfold — which 
is no doubt generally very far below the truth — 
then one-tenth part of all our ministerial labor 
is employed in the eradication of the natural 
and unavoidable corrupt condition of our fel- 
low-men, and nine-tenths against the additions 
w r e ourselves have willfully and wickedly made 
to it. Let us face the truth fairly. 

Then, one-tenth part — but really more likely 
it is one-hundredth part — of the general wick- 
edness around us is inherited capital to begin 
with, and to this we have added, by our own 
conduct and criminal negligence, the other 
nine-tenths, or ninety-nine hundredths. Now, 
the question arises, Had we not better turn 
our labors, or a portion of them, against this 
large increase of accumulated stock in the way 



Conclusion. 257 

of preventive ? Prevention is better than cure. 
Can we not get control of this rapidly increas- 
ing stream of guilt at or near the fountain? 
Sin is never necessary. Then, it is always erad- 
icable. The argument in the foregoing treatise 
recommends that we move our works nearer 
the fountain — :as near as we can get — and not 
wait till the stream has acquired large volume 
and heavy momentum. I think the practica- 
bility of ministering the gospel to the inhab- 
itants of the cradle and the nursery has been 
shown. The gospel is adapted to persons of 
all ages, and not by any means exclusively to 
those of five or ten years and upward. The 
child of one year, or the half of it, is capable 
of obedience, as much so as he ever will be; and 
from that time on a habit of cheerful, ready 
obedience is easily established and maintained. 
His obedience is to what he recognizes as 
rightful authority. In a very short time, as 
the intellect begins to open a little, and he can 
begin to understand a little about Bible char- 
acters, and God, and Christ, this obedience is 
easily extended from the parent to the Maker. 
Christianity is exactly adapted to the particu- 
lar condition of every person at every period 
of life from the birth to the grave, and to no 
one period better than another. 
17 



258 Christian Cradlehood. 

The largest difficulty in the way, outside of 
ourselves probably, is the irreligious associa- 
tions to which our children are necessarily ex- 
posed. If this cannot be wholly, it can be 
partially, overcome by care and diligence. 
If parents expect to bring up children for any 
good, they must expect to do something more 
than supply their physical wants. The pa- 
rental relation implies constant, unceasing 
labor and care to keep the little ones from 
ruinous troubles with which this world is so 
full. Both pastor and parent must double, 
treble — yea, quadruple — not the amount of la- 
bor bestowed on children, but the amount of 
well-directed thought and care so appreciated. 
The pastor has as yet scarcely entered this 
field. There is an open door and high prom- 
ise of rich harvest. 



The End. 



wl 



